On last note, the problem with the pro-life stance is that it is not about the child, person-hood, health, murder or religion. It is purely about being anti-women. Pro-lifers don't give a damn about the fetus, they sure as hell don't give a damn after its born and they care even less about the woman. They would rather both die than one be saved, even if that one is the fetus. It is all about control and punishing women. What is more, if they find themselves inconveniently pregnant, they will be the first in line at the clinic for an abortion (normally so they don't get seen by their fellow protestors.)
Syl, I think that defining the "pro-life" activists as all being anti-woman, as being primarily interested in controlling and punishing women is inaccurate. While I'm sure there may be some misogynist assholes out there who are thinking along those lines, the vast majority of pro-lifers I know and have met seem to be genuinely concerned about the life of what they consider to be a child.
True, they focus on that "child" so much that many of them utterly lose sight of the fact that there is a woman involved, too. I think a lot of the hateful and harsh language directed at women from the pro-life movement is not motivated by any kind of misogyny, but rather by anger and frustration. They honestly see women seeking abortions as people attempting to murder children, and this makes them understandably angry. I don't agree with their emotional position, but I understand why they feel the way they do.
I think it is dangerous to start thinking of the other side of the issue as "evil" or motivated by hatred or misogyny. It renders them into a faceless, frothing mob, and they aren't. They are people who have arrived at a radically different emotional and logical conclusion to a very contentious issue, the vast majority of them for what they believe to be good, honorable reasons. To portray them all as some kind of single-minded, malevolent villains is not helpful. We don't need WWII style demonizing propaganda. It is not constructive to take the worst possible example from the opposition and extrapolate that image out to include them all.
Do assholes out to punish women exist in the "pro-life" movement? Absolutely. Are they the majority, the norm? Absolutely not. Many pro-lifers are active in lobbying for additional services and resources for struggling new mothers. I was having a conversation with a pro-life organizer here in NE Ohio last year (yes, we pro-choicers can, in fact, have conversations with them) and she expressed to me that one of the most difficult and frustrating things about the pro-life cause is that in order to gain any kind of political influence, they have had to ally themselves with fiscal conservatives, whose primary motivation in being pro-life often seems to be simply de-funding Planned Parenthood to cut spending. These fiscal conservatives (almost universally Republicans) have even less interest in extending social supports for new mothers than they do supporting reproductive health issues. The pro-life movement has made a Devil's Deal, entering into a political alliance with the very people least likely to actually support the long term viability of their moral position.
Your average pro-lifer believes in their souls that abortion murders a child. They aren't out to punish women, or to screw over brown people, or any of the other theories about their motives. Pure and simply they are desperately trying to stop what they consider to be industrialized murder on a Holocaust scale. They're wrong, but that's what they believe. We will never get anywhere in this issue until we all, both sides, strive to understand the other. It's unfortunate that the pro-life side is utterly unwilling to do this. We on the pro-choice side can not afford to sink to that level.
