Being simply “pro-choice” is not enough anymore. Now, Democrats must be “anti-pro-life” to be considered someone that supports abortion rights. Those within the pro-life movement are deemed as spewing hate speech and therefore must be silenced.
As Jonathan Turley notes, one of the goals for the pro-choice movement is to be anything but associated with pro-lifers.
For example, students at the University of Michigan attempted to cancel a keynote speaker because of her pro-life views. Her speech was not centered on abortion at all, but due to her “radical” beliefs, students felt the need to quiet her altogether.
The cancel campaign created a petition that students could sign, claiming, “While we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University’s position on abortion,” the Michigan Daily reported. Essentially, they encourage diverse viewpoints, as long as they don’t have to hear them.
By portraying the pro-life movement in this threatening light, the attack on pregnancy centers and other pro-life programs seemed to be justified. This type of language not only encourages more division among political parties, but those that are “anti-pro-life” essentially admit to not supporting life and options for expectant mothers.
“‘Anti-pro-life’ says it all. First they hated babies, then they hated moms, and now they hate life. This was never about supporting women,” a pro-life advocate said. “Abortion was and always will be eugenics. Their movement is a movement of death. If that doesn’t concern you, wake up.”
Now, some argue that those who are pro-life do not support the life of the mother, but an ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion. If the mother’s life is at risk and there is no way to save the baby, then the obvious answer is to save the mother. Intentionally choosing to kill an innocent baby is a completely different arena.
Nevertheless, pro-abortion advocates don’t see these as mutually exclusive and harp on the fact that pro-life activists strip away a woman’s choice. Yet, their stream of logic continues to be inconsistent.
The Pro-Choice Caucus in May even stated that the word “choice” was “harmful language” and claimed that the word “decision” was a better term to use. If that is the case, giving mothers the power to decide, then why are pro-abortion activists encouraged to vandalize and cut funding for pregnancy centers? How is that giving expectant mothers options?
The goal of the Democratic Party in pushing abortion rights is to allow more women the “choice” to decide what to do with their bodies. Rather than simply focusing on that agenda, they attack the other side and encourage their supporters to do the same.
This strategy will do nothing but create more division and reckless discourse among Democrats and Republicans. There is no easy remedy to fix this heap of a mess, but I can tell you that titling your political movement “anti-the movement you are against” is not pursuing that fix.
Esther Wickham is a summer 2022 Washington Examiner fellow.
