It’s time for the prochoice movement to call for an end to the use of medieval ‘homunculus’ language--‘preborn babies’ and ‘unborn humans.’ That language, such as what Kazmeryk used,
Is coercive, inaccurate, and deceptive. Men do not deposit fully formed babies into the uterus. They need to use appropriate scientific/medical terms and stop inaccurate representations in the models they choose.
It’s time for the prochoice movement to call for an end to the use of medieval ‘homunculus’ language--‘preborn babies’ and ‘unborn humans.’ That language, such as what Kazmeryk used,
Is coercive, inaccurate, and deceptive. Men do not deposit fully formed babies into the uterus. They need to use appropriate scientific/medical terms and stop inaccurate representations in the models they choose.
It's an excellent analysis and reporting of how Georgia crafted its fetal personhood law. Your jaw will drop at the language they assumed as fact. (unborn persons, etc. ) It's so uneducated and yet here we are -- Kiplingers ran a piece this past year on how to go about claiming that fetus on GA state tax returns. So it starts as lies and ends up in law.
One thing that bothers me about pro-choice reactions to this language is that they don't call out that it's implying that women are public property for fetuses with the state acting as their "ward". I'm not so concerned about the homunculus language as I am that.
While I agree with all that, we are not doing enough to erode this idea of fetal personhood at conception or ‘heartbeat.’ We have allowed the anti-abortion movement to hold itself up as moral, when they are anything but. Until we erode that belief on multiple fronts, along with the bodily autonomy arguments, we are going to have a hard time reversing these immoral laws in mostly red states. Sadly the most impactful stories will be those of pregnant women’s suffering, but I think eventually they’ll have to act on the expected backlash while leaving the bans largely in place.
The Democrats are not a good job in fighting the disinformation war. They should take out their own billboards. They should talk more about the women who have suffered. I'd make a big billboard in the middle of the biggest Texas highway and portray a scene from the Handmaid's Tale, or Star Trek. Name it "Dystopia, brought to you by the Grand Oppressive Party."
I’m 64 years old, and for most, if not all, of my lifetime, Democrats have sucked at messaging.
The election of Nixon in 1968 really seemed to crush the progressive spirit in the party. After that, they floundered, and let the Republicans tag them as weak and soft. When Reagan creamed them in 1980, the Democrats moved to the right, and though Clinton won in 1992, he did so by messaging (and governing) that was distinctly centrist. Throughout all those years, the messaging from Democrats was never strong. The New deal and the Great Society were left in the dust. Issues like abortion were either rarely discussed, or only discussed in very apologetic terms. Abortion was presented as a necessary evil - “safe, legal, and rare.”
Every time I would see a Democratic media person discuss abortion with a Republican media person, the Democrat would have the look wiped with them. It drove me up a wall. *I* could have debated the issue better, for heaven’s sake. The Democrats acted as though they were ashamed to be pro-choice, and they would utterly flip if they were called pro-abortion. “No one is pro-abortion!” Well, yes, actually, some of us are.
A woman whose options are abortion or having a child she doesn’t want and can’t afford is, in that moment, very much pro-abortion. When I worked as a clinic escort, even the force birth protestors who snuck in the back way for the procedure were very much pro their own abortion!
You can’t message effectively if you start off apologetic about what you’re defending.
Abortion isn’t the only issue the Democrats have approached this way. Anything to do with helping poor people has been treated this way since Nixon, too. Clinton and his “ending welfare as we know it” is another issue they handled the same way.
LGBT rights? It wasn’t until Biden pushed Obama on the issue that we could even get a Democratic president to say same sex marriage was ok.
Democrats need to message as though they actually believe their issues are positive things for the country.
It's only recently though that all Democrats have come to believe that. (And that all Republicans have gone hard hard right.) As late as when Obama was president, there were still lots of Southern Democrats that weren't really at all liberal or progressive. The realignment has our party much more unified on policy, although we still have to hold all of the moderates. So it's a matter of how the change in composition of the party changes our messaging. We still seem to be working that out, and normally primary elections are a big part of that process. The older politicians don't change; they get replaced by newer ones who are different. (Same on the Republican side, to horrific effect.)
Well, I got confirmation today that even the old ones can change if you push hard enough. I have called the WH x 2, messaged every Biden/Harris account on X & Threads, & messaged Quintin Fulchs on Biden’s campaign team telling them that he needs to learn to say the word abortion, that it’s not a dirty word. And today 7/16 he said it in the speech he gave in Las Vegas!!!!! Big win 🏆
Yes, we have grown more unified. And the messaging is starting to change. I’m just pointing out some of the pitfalls that Democrats have run into in the past, and hoping they will not return to the old messaging at the first defeat.
Fetal personhood doesn't support their argument, though. If fetuses are people, they're literally arguing that women are their chattel. More specifically, the state is taking private property for private public use with fetuses being wards of the state. It violates the 5th, 13th and 14th amendments. It's called fetal coverture.
State Abortion Bans: Pregnancy as a New Form of Coverture
I read that article. I’m interested in how most regular people think of these things. They are more often than not conflicted--and the ‘baby’ image in their mind is a compelling one. More powerful than most of what’s in that article is the images MYA is putting out of what real embryonic tissue looks like. Here in Texas billboards filed with the image of fully formed babies are still all over the place, along with lies.
I think people don't actually believe early abortions are the alleged killing of fully formed human beings. It isn't about "saving babies" but *using babies* as a justice system to punish women for their "sins". A sentence their partners aren't condemned to, of course. They just make these bad faith arguments as justification for their misogyny and sanctimony.
What I’ve heard is ‘a spirit’ coming with the beginning of a pregnancy and a friend who had a first trimester pregnancy having some regret about ending potential life. Those are both manifestations of what I’m talking about. Republican areas are rife with pastors with no theological training, many in ‘cowboy’ churches, stoking the ‘precious’ baby image repeated by Bryan Hughes, the senate sponsor of Texas’ heartbeat bill. I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the impact of the prolife America billboards all over the south.
I doubt they have much impact on the abortion rate. They might stop them from aborting the first pregnancy but because that child is more likely to be born in poverty, it guarantees they'll abort the second or third pregnancies in order to feed the kids they already have.
I don’t know. Go to the African American community and see the billboards targeting them. We need data to show the strength of the association one way or the other--the impact of social marketing of inaccurate embryonic and fetal images and the language that accompanies it.
Black people have abortion rates five times white women do (even though they still have higher birth rates). So clearly it has had no impact on them. It's impact is clearly a difficult thing to measure. Personally, when I had my abortion, they asked if I'd like to see the sonogram when they gave me one. I said yes and I still had the abortion. When it comes to the reality of the circumstances people are in when they're faced with the choice, I doubt these images make much difference. Especially if they already have children they're worried about feeding as in the case of 60% of women who get abortions.
Idk, Laura, that's a good question. How dumb are these people? How much of their own bullshit do they believe? You're each coming at this from a different angle, and you both make good arguments. I have to think there's some truth in both of them. And then there also might be a difference between what logic tells them about 'babies' and what their emotions are telling them, and they're going with the latter.
It is both logic and emotion. It's a classic appeal to emotion fallacy by anti-abortion. It comes down to the weaponizing of babies to enslave women by appealing to people's emotions. They don't actually give a flying fuck about babies with all the horror stories coming out of women being forced to give birth to babies who die short, painful deaths. They only care about controlling and punishing women. Babies are just the tool to do it with. Fetuses and babies aren't actually people to them. They're just props.
Of all the things said above, seeing what you said in black and white crushes my soul. I have always thought the same, this is about controlling women and preventing their autonomy. We are second class citizens now and it literally breaks me.
It's a long road ahead but women aren't going to take this abuse anymore. Gen z especially who this primarily impacts in their prime childbearing years. This is their last gasp before the final blow to their power.
But the good news then is if there are people who truly thought they were anti-abortion because "babies", then they're the ones most likely to be distressed by the reality of what's going on and to reconsider. If no one changes their mind then they WERE all just evil. Although when your core beliefs are questioned that way you tend to be resistant to the information, so it will probably take time.
It’s time for the prochoice movement to call for an end to the use of medieval ‘homunculus’ language--‘preborn babies’ and ‘unborn humans.’ That language, such as what Kazmeryk used,
Is coercive, inaccurate, and deceptive. Men do not deposit fully formed babies into the uterus. They need to use appropriate scientific/medical terms and stop inaccurate representations in the models they choose.
When you get a chance, read this.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26410397.2019.1686201?cookieSet=1
It's an excellent analysis and reporting of how Georgia crafted its fetal personhood law. Your jaw will drop at the language they assumed as fact. (unborn persons, etc. ) It's so uneducated and yet here we are -- Kiplingers ran a piece this past year on how to go about claiming that fetus on GA state tax returns. So it starts as lies and ends up in law.
It’s freekin maddening, grrr 😡
One thing that bothers me about pro-choice reactions to this language is that they don't call out that it's implying that women are public property for fetuses with the state acting as their "ward". I'm not so concerned about the homunculus language as I am that.
While I agree with all that, we are not doing enough to erode this idea of fetal personhood at conception or ‘heartbeat.’ We have allowed the anti-abortion movement to hold itself up as moral, when they are anything but. Until we erode that belief on multiple fronts, along with the bodily autonomy arguments, we are going to have a hard time reversing these immoral laws in mostly red states. Sadly the most impactful stories will be those of pregnant women’s suffering, but I think eventually they’ll have to act on the expected backlash while leaving the bans largely in place.
The Democrats are not a good job in fighting the disinformation war. They should take out their own billboards. They should talk more about the women who have suffered. I'd make a big billboard in the middle of the biggest Texas highway and portray a scene from the Handmaid's Tale, or Star Trek. Name it "Dystopia, brought to you by the Grand Oppressive Party."
I’m 64 years old, and for most, if not all, of my lifetime, Democrats have sucked at messaging.
The election of Nixon in 1968 really seemed to crush the progressive spirit in the party. After that, they floundered, and let the Republicans tag them as weak and soft. When Reagan creamed them in 1980, the Democrats moved to the right, and though Clinton won in 1992, he did so by messaging (and governing) that was distinctly centrist. Throughout all those years, the messaging from Democrats was never strong. The New deal and the Great Society were left in the dust. Issues like abortion were either rarely discussed, or only discussed in very apologetic terms. Abortion was presented as a necessary evil - “safe, legal, and rare.”
Every time I would see a Democratic media person discuss abortion with a Republican media person, the Democrat would have the look wiped with them. It drove me up a wall. *I* could have debated the issue better, for heaven’s sake. The Democrats acted as though they were ashamed to be pro-choice, and they would utterly flip if they were called pro-abortion. “No one is pro-abortion!” Well, yes, actually, some of us are.
A woman whose options are abortion or having a child she doesn’t want and can’t afford is, in that moment, very much pro-abortion. When I worked as a clinic escort, even the force birth protestors who snuck in the back way for the procedure were very much pro their own abortion!
You can’t message effectively if you start off apologetic about what you’re defending.
Abortion isn’t the only issue the Democrats have approached this way. Anything to do with helping poor people has been treated this way since Nixon, too. Clinton and his “ending welfare as we know it” is another issue they handled the same way.
LGBT rights? It wasn’t until Biden pushed Obama on the issue that we could even get a Democratic president to say same sex marriage was ok.
Democrats need to message as though they actually believe their issues are positive things for the country.
Excellent mini-article Broce, you nailed it. I’m going to remember your explanation of how Democrats message the next time I message an official.
Couldn't agree more!
It's only recently though that all Democrats have come to believe that. (And that all Republicans have gone hard hard right.) As late as when Obama was president, there were still lots of Southern Democrats that weren't really at all liberal or progressive. The realignment has our party much more unified on policy, although we still have to hold all of the moderates. So it's a matter of how the change in composition of the party changes our messaging. We still seem to be working that out, and normally primary elections are a big part of that process. The older politicians don't change; they get replaced by newer ones who are different. (Same on the Republican side, to horrific effect.)
Well, I got confirmation today that even the old ones can change if you push hard enough. I have called the WH x 2, messaged every Biden/Harris account on X & Threads, & messaged Quintin Fulchs on Biden’s campaign team telling them that he needs to learn to say the word abortion, that it’s not a dirty word. And today 7/16 he said it in the speech he gave in Las Vegas!!!!! Big win 🏆
Yes, we have grown more unified. And the messaging is starting to change. I’m just pointing out some of the pitfalls that Democrats have run into in the past, and hoping they will not return to the old messaging at the first defeat.
🤞
I should have said, ‘while including the bodily autonomy arguments.’
Fetal personhood doesn't support their argument, though. If fetuses are people, they're literally arguing that women are their chattel. More specifically, the state is taking private property for private public use with fetuses being wards of the state. It violates the 5th, 13th and 14th amendments. It's called fetal coverture.
State Abortion Bans: Pregnancy as a New Form of Coverture
https://virginialawreview.org/articles/state-abortion-bans-pregnancy-as-a-new-form-of-coverture/
I read that article. I’m interested in how most regular people think of these things. They are more often than not conflicted--and the ‘baby’ image in their mind is a compelling one. More powerful than most of what’s in that article is the images MYA is putting out of what real embryonic tissue looks like. Here in Texas billboards filed with the image of fully formed babies are still all over the place, along with lies.
The anti choice side can only win by lying and deceiving.
I think people don't actually believe early abortions are the alleged killing of fully formed human beings. It isn't about "saving babies" but *using babies* as a justice system to punish women for their "sins". A sentence their partners aren't condemned to, of course. They just make these bad faith arguments as justification for their misogyny and sanctimony.
What I’ve heard is ‘a spirit’ coming with the beginning of a pregnancy and a friend who had a first trimester pregnancy having some regret about ending potential life. Those are both manifestations of what I’m talking about. Republican areas are rife with pastors with no theological training, many in ‘cowboy’ churches, stoking the ‘precious’ baby image repeated by Bryan Hughes, the senate sponsor of Texas’ heartbeat bill. I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the impact of the prolife America billboards all over the south.
I doubt they have much impact on the abortion rate. They might stop them from aborting the first pregnancy but because that child is more likely to be born in poverty, it guarantees they'll abort the second or third pregnancies in order to feed the kids they already have.
I don’t know. Go to the African American community and see the billboards targeting them. We need data to show the strength of the association one way or the other--the impact of social marketing of inaccurate embryonic and fetal images and the language that accompanies it.
Black people have abortion rates five times white women do (even though they still have higher birth rates). So clearly it has had no impact on them. It's impact is clearly a difficult thing to measure. Personally, when I had my abortion, they asked if I'd like to see the sonogram when they gave me one. I said yes and I still had the abortion. When it comes to the reality of the circumstances people are in when they're faced with the choice, I doubt these images make much difference. Especially if they already have children they're worried about feeding as in the case of 60% of women who get abortions.
Yes, this.
Idk, Laura, that's a good question. How dumb are these people? How much of their own bullshit do they believe? You're each coming at this from a different angle, and you both make good arguments. I have to think there's some truth in both of them. And then there also might be a difference between what logic tells them about 'babies' and what their emotions are telling them, and they're going with the latter.
It is both logic and emotion. It's a classic appeal to emotion fallacy by anti-abortion. It comes down to the weaponizing of babies to enslave women by appealing to people's emotions. They don't actually give a flying fuck about babies with all the horror stories coming out of women being forced to give birth to babies who die short, painful deaths. They only care about controlling and punishing women. Babies are just the tool to do it with. Fetuses and babies aren't actually people to them. They're just props.
Of all the things said above, seeing what you said in black and white crushes my soul. I have always thought the same, this is about controlling women and preventing their autonomy. We are second class citizens now and it literally breaks me.
It's a long road ahead but women aren't going to take this abuse anymore. Gen z especially who this primarily impacts in their prime childbearing years. This is their last gasp before the final blow to their power.
But the good news then is if there are people who truly thought they were anti-abortion because "babies", then they're the ones most likely to be distressed by the reality of what's going on and to reconsider. If no one changes their mind then they WERE all just evil. Although when your core beliefs are questioned that way you tend to be resistant to the information, so it will probably take time.