We urge the media to immediately and permanently desist from using the terms “anti-abortion” and “pro-liofe" in its pages, online and on its air.  The continued use of these terms is deceptive and helps define a movement that seeks to curtail reproductive rights in terms that are, generally speaking, positive in tone.  

The terms “pro-life” and “anti-abortion” are accepted and used without question by the news media, but they are misleading and insulting. The term “pro-life” assumes that there is an “anti-life” opposition, in the same way that “anti-abortion” assumes that there are people who are “pro-abortion”, which is absurd- and not true.

The people who use the terms “pro-life” and “anti-abortion” for themselves might rightly be referred to as “pro-fetal rights”, which I do not think is inaccurate or disrespectful, or “anti-reproductive rights”, as they are championing the inalienable and unquestionable primacy of embryos over the rights of childbearing female persons. As a group, they promote the idea that a fertilized egg is sacred and want to enact laws that ensure that that belief cannot be opposed. They wish to deny the right of individuals to hold a different view of the fertilized egg, or to hold any other belief in regards to the rights of the fetus. “Pro-choice” is accurate; I suppose that one could regard "choice" in this instance as “anti-fetal rights”, to the extent that “pro-choice” implies that the decision to carry a fertilized egg to term rests solely on the woman in whose womb the fetus is conceived, and that effectively defines the fertilized egg as not having rights. “Right to life” is also accurate then, as it assumes that every fertilized egg has primacy of rights over the woman in whose womb it is housed.

I believe the correct and most accurate term is “reproductive rights” because the central issue is whether or not the female person in our society is to be defined first and foremost as an incubator for offspring regardless of her preference or needs. Therefore we would have “pro” and “anti” reproductive rights. With the ratcheting up of pressure on the Supreme Court to revisit Roe v. Wade, I would like to see the news media take the necessary step of examining the assumptions implied in the use of such loaded terms and ideally see a shift in how we frame the discussion.  Words matter.