Life: No easy choices

[muckefuck]

On the platform where I catch the el homebound, there's the first clever anti-abortion ad I've ever seen. It shows a picture of a woman overlaid with a quote about how empty she felt after terminating a pregnancy and concludes with the slogan, "Something dies inside you when you have an abortion." It's the only anti-abortion ad I've seen which speaks to the effects on the mother rather than the effects on the foetus. (However, the clever bit is that the slogan can also be read as a stance on the status of the unborn child.)

I haven't seen any ads from the abortion rights camp in a while. What they really need is some way of positioning themselves as anti-abortion. This isn't as strange as it sounds. As I said in a previous entry, no one is "pro-abortion" in the same sense that no one is "pro-war": They acknowledge that it's a sucky option, but sometimes it's the only effective one and, for that reason, they want it to remain on the table.

Since Pro-Lifers generally oppose contraception and sex education as well, they're vulnerable to the charge of aiding and abetting future abortions. The question is how to work this into a campaign without coming off too negatively and alienating the average person.

Comments

[welcomerain.livejournal.com]

Something dies inside me when I go to the unemployment office, too, but I don't see ads about that. DO I? DO I? HUH?

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen any ads from the abortion rights camp in a while. What they really need is some way of positioning themselves as anti-abortion. This isn't as strange as it sounds.

No, it really isn't. If women were completely and perfectly "empowered" (to use the hated catchphrase) reproductively, there would be no unwanted pregnancies in the first place. The need for abortion itself represents an ongoing failure to establish control over own reproductive capacities. Kathe Pollitt asked once, for example, why we don't all just say to hell with parents and go stand outside shcools to leaflet teenagers with birth control information directly; I think that's an excellent question. (I have more to say about this, but alas, I'm supposed to be working, so maybe I'll come back later).

[astrophysicat.livejournal.com]

why we don't all just say to hell with parents and go stand outside shcools to leaflet teenagers with birth control information directly;

That's a great idea, except I think the answer might have something to do with fear of being shot at.

Though the deeper implications about who has the right to teach children, and how are "children"'s interests best served are a lot thornier.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and it occurred to me after I posted that it would make an interesting sort of free speech issue, as well. Supposing you could make a pamphlet that could not be interepreted as "obscene", are there any other restrictions on what kind of information can be given to minors? I've never really heard about there being rules for that sort of thing.