First, deep breath. You have said that you’re pro-CHOICE, which means that the pregnant person gets the opportunity to CHOOSE whether to have an abortion. It does NOT mean that an abortion is mandatory for that person. (IMO, the fact that pro-choice folks don’t make that linguistic distinction, regularly and publicly is one of the reasons that their arguments continue to weaken in the press.) So my suggestion is to make that distinction to take yourself out of the line of fire of pro-life activists that would assert: “pro-choice people LIKE abortions!”

You state later that the “response” you see in arguments like this is “good kids don’t get into those situations… good parents make their children behave… the world is evil and a good parent has to protect his kids… you can’t solve a sin with a bigger sin..”

I’ve seen and heard that too. I’ve had success (again, using a tactic inspired by Professor Lakoff) framing that as a mere COUNTERARGUMENT, as opposed to a BELIEF. “Belief” is a weigted word that tends to reinforce in the believer’s mind that something is unshakeable, where casting whatever they’ve said as a counterargument tends to lend equal validity to whatever it is that you want to assert. (Of course, now I have to hope that whoever I’m actively arguing against at any given point doesn’t regularly read your blog, see my post, and adopt the tactic. )

I don’t know Professor Lakoff personally; if you work with him please pass this on – I’d be interested to know what he thinks of that theory.

*Joe: “That is the new state of democracy and division… urban vs. rural.”

I think this is a very profound statement that really is shaping into a horrible truth… I wonder if there are ways to map Social Network taxonomy against regional concentrations of the users…

New Hampshire is trying to pass legislation that states BOTH parents must give permission to minors to have abortions. I actually snorted when I heard that: Assuming two parents were ever around, assuming you know where both of them are, assuming you don’t have gay parents who may have used a sperm donor and/or may or may not have “real” parental authority as determined by The State, assuming both parents are loving, supportive, not abusive, sober, didn’t commit incest to create the pregnancy in the first place, and on and on.

I agree – laws like this are so clearly aimed at upper middle-class parents. I grew up in Detroit, one of the poorest cities in the U.S. I was fortunate enough to attend an all-girls Catholic school. My parents both worked fulltime at multiple jobs to send me there, as did many friends’ parents.

Anyway. My school once invited a guest speaker, a woman named Molly Kelly, to talk about celibacy (a mother of almost a dozen children talking about celibacy).

I will never forget a metaphor she used, that likened going home and telling your parents that you were pregnant is “like getting lost in the store when you were little. First they’re angry, because you scared and worried them, but deep down they love you. They don’t stay angry forever, they come around and are just glad to have you with them, no matter what.” We were baffled. I saw jaws literally hanging open all around the auditorium. This woman really seemed to believe that this was true of all families! What a bubble.

Her talk was followed by a Q-and-A period that ended up in utter mayhem. I was so proud of my fellow women that day. I, and many others, got up and let her have it. We opened up and told her exactly what our home lives were like, about abuse, rape, getting kicked out of the house at 16 and living with friends, etc. We told about teachers at our school that said women had to leave school if we carried pregnancies to term (real pro-life).

The teachers (and nuns especially) were horrified. They tried to get everyone to return to class, and nobody moved. Almost 1,000 girls sat still and would not leave their seats until this speaker answered our questions. For once, these sanctimonious people got to hear, at least for a while, about what teenage pregnancy is really like, and issues related to it.

Sorry for the long-winded post. I could write volumes on being a teenager in Detroit, on friends who had to go to court to get permission for abortions (and then almost couldn’t because the court dates took so long to get that they threatened to push them past their first trimesters). Sigh.

Great post, Danah.

What interests me is that “protection” and “safety” are essentially the same thing — conservatives are more likely to talk about things in terms of “defense” than “protection” or “safety”, so by using
“protection” they were actually co-opting liberal language.

So how do I feel? When I was driing home last night they were still thinking that Prop 75 and Prop. 73 would pass, which really honestly brought me to tears in the car. Not big, gulpy, sobby tears, just…

The maps that the Sec. of State’s office has produced (available here: http://vote2005.ss.ca.gov/ )are particularly interesting. Check out this one for Prop. 73:

http://vote2005.ss.ca.gov/Returns/prop/mapR073.htm

That is the new state of democracy and division… urban vs. rural.