“Reproductive health” is one of those Orwellian neologisms that makes pro-life moderates not trust pro-choicers, because we know you’re mostly just using it as a way to make abortion seem less bad by surrounding it with necessary services, and it’s hard to describe that procedure as “healthy” when one person ends up dead from it.
Sorry, but this is one of those hard truths the pro-choice movement is going to have to learn if it ever wants to win back national abortion rights. But they’re too busy icing their burns from when “pro-decision” fell flat on its fucking face, so it’s not exactly like I trust them to figure this one out.
As someone who could be fairly reasonably described both as being pro-life and as being pro-choice, calling abortion as a whole "reproductive health" definitely bothers me.
I’m going to have to call bullshit here my friend. The way I perceive Reproductive health is a wide ranging term for a variety of procedures and medicines. We are talking birth control of all types, both male and female, anything to do with a persons ability to get pregnant or to get someone else pregnant. Calling abortion reproductive health care is placing it within a section of our health care system that it is connected to. Abortion doesn’t just happen in a vacuum of medical care, planned parenthood offers all sorts of reproductive health care options. Yes, “reproductive health” may seem like a way to church up “abortion” but it’s really more about placing abortion where it belongs, within a regular system of health care.
But abortion is so clearly much MORE than just “health care”.
An MRI is an MRI. Phlebotomy is phlebotomy, except to a few tiny religious minorities who obsess about wierd readings of the Bible.
Those things can easily be medicalized, and *have* been.
Abortion isn’t some neutral procedure like a pap smear. It’s not even “overwhelmingly-popular-but-mildly-politicized” like most non-hormonal forms of contraception. It’s highly political!
And “reproductive health” seems to me to be an is-ought fallacy at work. It’s trying to define abortion as something that *shouldn’t* be politicized in order to automagically win the debate, instead of just acknowledging that regardless of *how* you define it, it’s simply a really fraught issue.
In general, I’m in favor of leveling with people, which means that in situations like this, we shouldn’t be either overwhelming them with nuance NOR insulting them with oversimplification. I think “reproductive health” veers far too close to the latter, and provides too simple of an answer for anyone who doesn’t already agree to take seriously. IE, it’s an applause line for the base, not a persuasive argument for moderates.
I guess I somewhat agree with you but I feel like you’re missing the point. Abortion is part of reproductive health. Yes it’s part marketing but also part real life. Women need to have access to all manner of reproductive health, not just abortion. Many abortions that take place in hospitals aren’t planned. Something go wrong either with the baby or the mom and action needs to be taken. Abortion is simply one action among many. Putting abortion under this larger umbrella places it more within the medical context of which it really is. I think it depoliticizes it in an honest way.
Do I think labeling abortion as part of reproductive health care and therefore healthcare in general will sway many anti abortion folks? No. But is it maybe a
More honest and realistic place for abortion to be within our larger health care discussion, yes.
This may be crass, but compare it to euthanasia. At one time a very hot political issue. Now much of the political fire has gone out, and it is addressed under the umbrella of end of life care. This term rolls together not just euthanasia but various other decisions and situations than many face towards the end of their lives. For the most part it’s a private matter with little political interference.
One last thing, abortion was only overturned at the Supreme Court because a gerrymandered political system worked by the GOP, used abortion access as a core political issue for decades and appointed justices who they knew would vote a certain way. The majority of Americans have always supported some access to abortion, regardless of what you call it. Just look at Kansas, red as can get, tuned down the opportunity to remove state constitutional protection for abortion. If Kansas can do it the nation can.
PS-hopefully we as a nation no longer rely on the Supreme Court for these large scale society altering decisions. We need more laws made to protect rights.
Just for the first few paragraphs... I think the problem is that its inherent objective is to elide the difference between different levels of reproductive health and what access is actually morally appropriate. For instance, very few people -if any!- say that hormone therapy is appropriate for toddlers, right? Just to use an extreme example and illustrate the point.
The branding exercise is to pretend that ALL reproductive health care inherently requires access, because it’s healthcare. But that doesn’t necessarily compute. We restrict on-demand access to misoprostol, for instance, because it’s not appropriate for, say, a healthy 21-year old woman who is not pregnant. There’s a moral calculus that goes into the access question for every single drug and procedure. Most of these are trivial calculations - for instance, over the counter drugs - so why are we being asked to just accept at face value that abortion “care” requires universal on-demand access, despite ample evidence that it’s one of the most controversial forms of “care” in all of modern medicine?
I think you’re hitting on the point without knowing it. Abortion is health care, it should be accessed like any other medical procedure. Thats what I think people mean by on demand. The only calculus should be health impacts to mother and fetus. It’s not advil, it’s a serious medical procedure. Restriction on access when done for reasons of a patients health make sense, that’s why we have doctors prescribe more impactful medicines. Abortion isn’t some one off medical action that floats around disconnected from other health decisions.
I get your point, you don’t want to left to be putting up a front of sorts by changing the name of a serious political and medical issue to sway voters. But at some level who cares? If Including abortion in a larger health care conversation helps just one more person be more comfortable accessing care then I’m all for it. I wish that the political aspects of abortion just weren’t there, and maybe this is the time when we start to make that reality happen, even if only for a few places.
As someone who could be fairly reasonably described both as being pro-life and as being pro-choice, calling abortion as a whole "reproductive health" definitely bothers me.
I’m going to have to call bullshit here my friend. The way I perceive Reproductive health is a wide ranging term for a variety of procedures and medicines. We are talking birth control of all types, both male and female, anything to do with a persons ability to get pregnant or to get someone else pregnant. Calling abortion reproductive health care is placing it within a section of our health care system that it is connected to. Abortion doesn’t just happen in a vacuum of medical care, planned parenthood offers all sorts of reproductive health care options. Yes, “reproductive health” may seem like a way to church up “abortion” but it’s really more about placing abortion where it belongs, within a regular system of health care.
But abortion is so clearly much MORE than just “health care”.
An MRI is an MRI. Phlebotomy is phlebotomy, except to a few tiny religious minorities who obsess about wierd readings of the Bible.
Those things can easily be medicalized, and *have* been.
Abortion isn’t some neutral procedure like a pap smear. It’s not even “overwhelmingly-popular-but-mildly-politicized” like most non-hormonal forms of contraception. It’s highly political!
And “reproductive health” seems to me to be an is-ought fallacy at work. It’s trying to define abortion as something that *shouldn’t* be politicized in order to automagically win the debate, instead of just acknowledging that regardless of *how* you define it, it’s simply a really fraught issue.
In general, I’m in favor of leveling with people, which means that in situations like this, we shouldn’t be either overwhelming them with nuance NOR insulting them with oversimplification. I think “reproductive health” veers far too close to the latter, and provides too simple of an answer for anyone who doesn’t already agree to take seriously. IE, it’s an applause line for the base, not a persuasive argument for moderates.
I guess I somewhat agree with you but I feel like you’re missing the point. Abortion is part of reproductive health. Yes it’s part marketing but also part real life. Women need to have access to all manner of reproductive health, not just abortion. Many abortions that take place in hospitals aren’t planned. Something go wrong either with the baby or the mom and action needs to be taken. Abortion is simply one action among many. Putting abortion under this larger umbrella places it more within the medical context of which it really is. I think it depoliticizes it in an honest way.
Do I think labeling abortion as part of reproductive health care and therefore healthcare in general will sway many anti abortion folks? No. But is it maybe a
More honest and realistic place for abortion to be within our larger health care discussion, yes.
This may be crass, but compare it to euthanasia. At one time a very hot political issue. Now much of the political fire has gone out, and it is addressed under the umbrella of end of life care. This term rolls together not just euthanasia but various other decisions and situations than many face towards the end of their lives. For the most part it’s a private matter with little political interference.
One last thing, abortion was only overturned at the Supreme Court because a gerrymandered political system worked by the GOP, used abortion access as a core political issue for decades and appointed justices who they knew would vote a certain way. The majority of Americans have always supported some access to abortion, regardless of what you call it. Just look at Kansas, red as can get, tuned down the opportunity to remove state constitutional protection for abortion. If Kansas can do it the nation can.
PS-hopefully we as a nation no longer rely on the Supreme Court for these large scale society altering decisions. We need more laws made to protect rights.
Just for the first few paragraphs... I think the problem is that its inherent objective is to elide the difference between different levels of reproductive health and what access is actually morally appropriate. For instance, very few people -if any!- say that hormone therapy is appropriate for toddlers, right? Just to use an extreme example and illustrate the point.
The branding exercise is to pretend that ALL reproductive health care inherently requires access, because it’s healthcare. But that doesn’t necessarily compute. We restrict on-demand access to misoprostol, for instance, because it’s not appropriate for, say, a healthy 21-year old woman who is not pregnant. There’s a moral calculus that goes into the access question for every single drug and procedure. Most of these are trivial calculations - for instance, over the counter drugs - so why are we being asked to just accept at face value that abortion “care” requires universal on-demand access, despite ample evidence that it’s one of the most controversial forms of “care” in all of modern medicine?
I think you’re hitting on the point without knowing it. Abortion is health care, it should be accessed like any other medical procedure. Thats what I think people mean by on demand. The only calculus should be health impacts to mother and fetus. It’s not advil, it’s a serious medical procedure. Restriction on access when done for reasons of a patients health make sense, that’s why we have doctors prescribe more impactful medicines. Abortion isn’t some one off medical action that floats around disconnected from other health decisions.
I get your point, you don’t want to left to be putting up a front of sorts by changing the name of a serious political and medical issue to sway voters. But at some level who cares? If Including abortion in a larger health care conversation helps just one more person be more comfortable accessing care then I’m all for it. I wish that the political aspects of abortion just weren’t there, and maybe this is the time when we start to make that reality happen, even if only for a few places.