Reproductive Rights: Brought to You by Pro-Life™?

You can call me crazy, but I think the term pro-life is losing us the abortion wars.
When the first, I’ll admit, brilliant PR person coined the term under Regan, it was the beginning of the end. Catchy and self-explanatory, pro-life has had the unfortunate effect of painting those of us in favor of abortion rights as pro-death. We can correct folks as much as we want, there’s no way to combat the more than two-decade long use of the term.
At least there was no way, until now.

As I see it, the only real chance we have at fighting back is to reclaim pro-life. I don’t mean writing more opinion pieces about how the pro-choice movement is for life too, I mean using the actual term. It makes sense – lord knows we’ve said it to ourselves enough. Reproductive rights means that every child is a wanted child an that we help people make healthy choices. It’s about education and empowerment. We want to put men’s and women’s physical and mental health first, making sure that we all have the ability to make the best health care decisions for ourselves.
So what are we so afraid of? Sure it’s chancy, but imagine a world where NARAL and Planned Parenthood put out press releases announcing their new pro-life initiative to train more OBGYNs in medical abortion procedure. What would it be like if Nancy Pelosi introduced a piece of pro-life legislation providing government funding for low income women seeking abortion? What if we held a huge pro-life rally on the national mall, demanding better more affordable birth control and an end to parental notification laws? What if someone mentioned the pro-life candidate on national news, and no one knew it that meant the candidate was for or against abortion rights?
Liberating, isn’t it? As long as we continue to concede use of the actual term pro-life to those fighting against abortion, we continue to give them control over the way our national conversation about this issue plays out. And if we did it by the millions, we could knock the anti-abortion movement’s message platform right out from under them. Ok, so it’s a risk. But it just might be a risk worth taking.
A version of this was originally posted at http://ericasavestheday.tumblr.com/post/46747195/on-being-pro-life