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[McTraveller]

I'm going to stand by saying that the opposite of discourage is in fact encourage, rather than "not discourage." Just as the opposite of "short" isn't "not short", it's "long".

I will concede that the Pew survey did convey the liberal position as "neutral" on the discourage/encourage scale for the issue of homosexuality.  Now that I'm awake, I think I was envisioning in my mind a full scale of the question being asked, rather than just looking at the results.

@Reelya, I have to ask what is the minimum wage in your country and how many hours is that? $40k saved over 2 years of standard "US" 1920 hours a year (40 hrs x 48 weeks, which is higher than many non-US countries with say 35 hour weeks) is a savings (without interest) of $10.42 an hour.  Even if your minimum wage is $20 an hour, this is effectively a 50% savings rate, which is an outlier.  I'm honestly impressed though - most people are not willing to save at that rate!

"Pro-life" is indeed a dubious brand name.  Especially because the vast majority claiming to be "pro life" are, as others have said, against health care, pro death penalty, pro wall, etc; things which are demonstrably not in support of life.

[Starver]

I'm going to stand by saying that the opposite of discourage is in fact encourage, rather than "not discourage." Just as the opposite of "short" isn't "not short", it's "long".

It can be. And people can understand it to be, when it suits them. See the whole Section/Clause 28 thing the UK had about "not promoting (the idea of) homosexuality" which was used to ban things that merely said "they exist!".  But there, the opposite of encouraging was more sweeping it under the carpet. It wasn't (in itself) actual 'pink triangle'-type persecution, but it was an active and deliberate opposite of encouraging, meaning the commutative mappings of the negation function just aren't so cut and dried.

[voliol]

"Pro-life" is indeed a dubious brand name.  Especially because the vast majority claiming to be "pro life" are, as others have said, against health care, pro death penalty, pro wall, etc; things which are demonstrably not in support of life.

The religious argument, as I understand it, is that they are "pro life" for the "innocent unborns", but once you pop out you are subject to your own sins and also god's fickle will (!?) and thus they are also "pro death" and "pro suffering". The only way this world matters is as a judgement zone for the world to come, after all.

I.e. standard religious nutjob stuff.

[TD1]

Pro-choice is indeed a dubious brand name.

Where's the father's choice?
Where's the baby's choice?

[MorleyDev]

Well it's not the fathers body and a fetus is about as capable of making a choice as a coma patient or a stone so....

Really it's more "pro-it's way too complex a topic to have a hard rule so play it safe and leave it up to the person carrying the fetus to decide" but that doesn't fit on a t-shirt (as well as "anti-women being forced into having dodgy back-alley abortions that risk their life and future health because history has shown pregnant women will seek such things when desperate").

[Naturegirl1999]

What if the text wraps around the sides and back? Rather than trying to shove it all on one side?
(I understand and agree with your point)

[Arx]

I mean, I'd describe myself as pro-life because abortions for the sake of convenience seem to me only somewhat more ethical than drowning the kid at birth for the sake of convenience (just a lot safer for the mother). I get that it's a grey area and you don't want to force someone to try to raise a child that they don't have the means to, but my preferred solution is to one way or another prevent getting into that situation in the first place (this is of course a social problem and not easy to fix). Abortion, to me, isn't a cure, just a palliative. Are there circumstances justifying it? Certainly. In the case of risk to the mother or other more delicate reasons (etc.), it's understandable, but I struggle to accept it as a response to choosing not to use a condom. You can't just take a kid back to the shop if you decide you don't want it.

[Folly]

It sounds like Trump is going to make his last act in office to be ordering Troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Effectively leaving Biden a shitstorm to deal with when he takes office.

[Max™]

I mean, I'd describe myself as pro-life because abortions for the sake of convenience seem to me only somewhat more ethical than drowning the kid at birth for the sake of convenience (just a lot safer for the mother). I get that it's a grey area and you don't want to force someone to try to raise a child that they don't have the means to, but my preferred solution is to one way or another prevent getting into that situation in the first place (this is of course a social problem and not easy to fix). Abortion, to me, isn't a cure, just a palliative. Are there circumstances justifying it? Certainly. In the case of risk to the mother or other more delicate reasons (etc.), it's understandable, but I struggle to accept it as a response to choosing not to use a condom. You can't just take a kid back to the shop if you decide you don't want it.

Nobody has ever gotten an abortion "for the sake of convenience" I'm fairly certain.

Also for a huge chunk of a pregnancy if you took the thing out and asked someone what it was, most people would lean towards more "hunk of chewing gum?" or maybe "weird ass asian dish pre-cooking?" and some people would be able to say "ah, that's a mammalian fetus" before a certain point, but almost nobody would call it a kid until a surprisingly late point in development.

There's no magical infusion when a sperm and egg meet where it's suddenly an independent person, it's a potential person at best, one that might not even make it all the way without even having anything done to prevent it.

Though if you are fully in the "you got knocked up, deal with it" side of things, I assume you also think proper societal support is important? That would mean you're unlike the vast majority of right wing forced-birthers who will do any-goddamn-thing for a fetus until it falls out of someone, at which point they are fucking thrilled to do everything in their power to fuck over the mother, the child, and fight tooth and nail against trying to ensure this pregnancy they were willing to force to completion is as detrimental to everyone involved as possible.

[Arx]

I mean, I'd describe myself as pro-life because abortions for the sake of convenience seem to me only somewhat more ethical than drowning the kid at birth for the sake of convenience (just a lot safer for the mother). I get that it's a grey area and you don't want to force someone to try to raise a child that they don't have the means to, but my preferred solution is to one way or another prevent getting into that situation in the first place (this is of course a social problem and not easy to fix). Abortion, to me, isn't a cure, just a palliative. Are there circumstances justifying it? Certainly. In the case of risk to the mother or other more delicate reasons (etc.), it's understandable, but I struggle to accept it as a response to choosing not to use a condom. You can't just take a kid back to the shop if you decide you don't want it.

Nobody has ever gotten an abortion "for the sake of convenience" I'm fairly certain.

It's amazing how much faith you have in humanity, given the sheer amount of vitriol you've just been spewing at society in general. I've definitely heard of it.

Though if you are fully in the "you got knocked up, deal with it" side of things, I assume you also think proper societal support is important?

you don't want to force someone to try to raise a child that they don't have the means to, but my preferred solution is to one way or another prevent getting into that situation in the first place (this is of course a social problem and not easy to fix)

[Frumple]

It's amazing how much faith you have in humanity, given the sheer amount of vitriol you've just been spewing at society in general. I've definitely heard of it.

I mean, I've heard people say it happens. I've seen people point to folks claiming it, even.

I don't think I've ever seen either hold up to, like, any scrutiny whatsoever, though. The former is pretty much every friggin' time just a flat bloody lie, and the latter tends to involve folks that are royally fucked up on one front or another. Convenience might be the words they sayin' but it ain't the reason they doing it.

[TD1]

Well it's not the fathers body and a fetus is about as capable of making a choice as a coma patient or a stone so....

Really it's more "pro-it's way too complex a topic to have a hard rule so play it safe and leave it up to the person carrying the fetus to decide" but that doesn't fit on a t-shirt (as well as "anti-women being forced into having dodgy back-alley abortions that risk their life and future health because history has shown pregnant women will seek such things when desperate").

No, it's not the father's body. Does that mean he sacrifices a say in his offspring's continued existence? Pro-choice, of course, takes that choice from him.

No, a coma patient can't have a say. And so, if at all possible, they are brought back to the faculties required for them to gain their autonomy.

And let's not consistently label these as fetuses either, please. That is a deliberate reductio ad absurdum. According to my quick google (correct if wrong) a number of states have no week-related limit. Others are 20, 24, 25 weeks. At these stages, a baby can survive outside the womb.

Nobody has ever gotten an abortion "for the sake of convenience" I'm fairly certain.

Are you... misunderstanding what 'convenience' means?

I mean, I'd describe myself as pro-life because abortions for the sake of convenience seem to me only somewhat more ethical than drowning the kid at birth for the sake of convenience (just a lot safer for the mother). I get that it's a grey area and you don't want to force someone to try to raise a child that they don't have the means to, but my preferred solution is to one way or another prevent getting into that situation in the first place (this is of course a social problem and not easy to fix). Abortion, to me, isn't a cure, just a palliative. Are there circumstances justifying it? Certainly. In the case of risk to the mother or other more delicate reasons (etc.), it's understandable, but I struggle to accept it as a response to choosing not to use a condom. You can't just take a kid back to the shop if you decide you don't want it.

I agree.

[Arx]

It's amazing how much faith you have in humanity, given the sheer amount of vitriol you've just been spewing at society in general. I've definitely heard of it.

I mean, I've heard people say it happens. I've seen people point to folks claiming it, even.

I don't think I've ever seen either hold up to, like, any scrutiny whatsoever, though. The former is pretty much every friggin' time just a flat bloody lie, and the latter tends to involve folks that are royally fucked up on one front or another. Convenience might be the words they sayin' but it ain't the reason they doing it.

I'll concede that "convenience" is reductive, but I stand by that it's a dark grey area. I'm admittedly also not really qualified to comment at length, not being biologically female.

Practically I don't think there's any real gain to be made by banning abortion. It happens anyway, just... worse. But ethically I stand by my position that it's at best get, just better than some of the alternatives.

[MorleyDev]

No, it's not the father's body. Does that mean he sacrifices a say in his offspring's continued existence? Pro-choice, of course, takes that choice from him.

Hard to take away a choice they never had the right to in the first place.

At what point does a sperm+egg become sapient? To be honest it's probably sometime after their born, the human brain takes awhile to develop, but in the first few months you really are just talking a clump of cells that if you squint really hard is starting to get some of the functionality of a human being. The exact point at which they get that functionality is like the "how much do I have to shave the back of a chair off before it becomes a stool" problem, it's a vague category and a gradient rather than a clear line.

Conraceptives are fine, right? That prevents the potential for a human, so clearly potential-to-be-human isn't the issue.
Morning-after pills are clearly okay, right? That's just recently fertilized egg cells, so clearly fertalisation isn't the issue.
A few weeks? Well then it's basically still just a clump of cells.
20-odd weeks is survivable, usually with extreme medical intervention, but the distinction between patient and corpse is always going to be determined by scientific advances. (Like how cryogenic freezing is killing a person and hoping future medical advances make it not killing them).

Hence the "Hey it's a complex, grey topic without easily defined lines so let's just give the woman the right to safely choose because the alternative is them going for a coat hanger and a bottle of vodka to try and achieve the same end".

And let's not pretend contraceptives are 100% effectively. Unless the argument is that all men should be given SLVs at sexual maturity? And still that's discounting the horrors of rape. An abortion and a rape baby are both potentially traumatic, if a woman decides the former is less so than the latter I'm not going to stop them.

Maybe eventually we'll start growing human babies outside the womb and sex can be made purely recreational and children purely a choice, would get around a fair few problems. Pregnancy is a strain on a womans health at the best of times, is rather unpredictable (miscarriages and all), and disproportionately takes them out of the workforce too, so from both a physical and mental health and economics pov it offers benefits if we can take pregnancy out of the equation. But until then, gotta work with what we got.

[grave worm]

Anti-choice forced-birther types are really just against there being any medically safe options for abortion and basically want to force people to have to resort to dangerous back-alley methods of aborting or of course having an unwanted child. Abortion has been a thing for thousands of years, it's never going away, people are always going to be doing it, so it should be safe and available for everyone who wants it. I'm afraid that's the end of the story.