Steele Backpedals Again

Steele = synonymous with Steal as in steal your attention away from what the repub’s are really all about.

I think the entire pro-life and pro-choice argument underscores a major problem with the general framing of debates. In this case, if you have a choice between pro-life and pro-choice, then by choosing to name yourself pro-choice and thus against the pro-life movement, you are by definition easily placed into a category of, “anti-life” or, “pro-death.”That’s not to say pro-choice equates to pro-death. I bring it up only to point out that it is this sort of linguistic framing that makes pro-choice into some sort of evil, slimy, ne’er-do-well organization that wants to end life as we know it.It’s wrong, of course, to the point of absurdity. But it is there.

My Bad…Actually, steele and steal are Homophones, Not Synonyms.

…Steele is probably a Closet Homophone.

Bob’s right about being able to be pro-choice and anti-abortion. I don’t like a lot of the things people do with their bodies, but the key thing to remember is that it is THEIR body, not mine.

Hi Bob,You’re an asshole.Best Regards,Dad

It’s amazing how a conversation always brings out a mother or father joke. And the ubiquitous asshole comment.Trolls are fun, that way.

What amazes me about this comment as well as Sarah Palin’s from a few months ago is how they can use a version of the word “choice” in their explanation about how they are pro-Life. Can’t they avoid that word altogether in tyring to make their argument?In a different context, aren’t we all pro-Life? I’m certainly not pro-Death. But I don’t have the right to CHOOSE for someone else just as they don’t have a right to CHOOSE for me.On another note…Dear Bob’s dad,I see now that Bob’s intelligence comes from his mother’s side of the family.Best Regards,Broadway Carl

This is my point. Whoever began framing the abortion issue on the progressive side dropped the ball, by allowing the opposition to claim “pro-life” as their title. It makes any uninformed bystander think that if -that- side is pro-life, then the other, by default, -must- be pro-death.It’s wrong, ridiculous, nutty and insane. But it still holds, unfortunately, true. Perception is everything.

Yeah, Tim, but even the nutballs don’t call thei opposite pro-death. They go as far as calling it pro-abortion, which is ridiculous considering the fact that pro-choice is about a patient’s right to privacy. You’d have to be a moron not to know what the sides are… oh, wait…

I totally agree that we’ve let the “pro-lifers” frame the debate. Polls show a considerable majority of Americans are pro-choice but I’m sure if you asked further they’d say they are against abortion. I am personally anti-abortion but I also don’t believe in outlawing it. Before Roe, women used to try to abort themselves or find the backalley “doctor” with often tragic results.I’ve rarely heard any democrats say that they are personally strongly opposed to abortion while firmly supporting the right of doctors to perform abortions. Obama has come close, saying something like “we don’t all agree on abortion, but can’t we strive to lower the rate of unwanted pregnancies?” but it’s not really the same thing.

Tim -The pro-Choice frame was chosen to counter the pro-Abortion frame that the anti-Abortion faction was placing on their opposition. It appears that either you are falling for that framing again, or you are one of the anti-Choice faction.Do you believe that the government should be making this decision for everyone?Bob’s position on this topic is identical to my own. I don’t like abortion, but each woman has to be able to make that decision for herself. I consider it unconstitutional for the government to be making people’s personal decisions for them. If the minority that thinks that abortions are murder think that they can inflict their religion based beliefs on others, then they are theocrats and not Americans.

I think you’re missing my point, SillyRatfacedGit. I, personally, am pro-choice insofar as the title carries any weight. While I am certainly not what one might call pro-abortion (is anyone?), I am not nearly so chauvinistic as to exclaim I have some right, as a man, to tell a woman what she should or should not do.What I am saying is this: Anytime a debate is framed as pro-something, there is going to be an anti-something. Two sides of the same debate cannot, by definition, be both pro-something. There -must- be an anti- to a pro-. This makes it so that pro-choice seems, at first uninformed glance, to be anti-life.Granted, it also makes pro-life to seem anti-choice (in this case, not exactly a stretch), but would you, on a personal, moral, and ethical level rather be anti-life, or anti-choice? If I knew nothing of the debate itself (and many don’t) then I would simply assume anti-choice -must- be wrong, because anti-life -cannot- be wrong. So I, in turn, would be anti-choice.As for switching the terminology in response to the opposition’s framing of the other side of the debate: why, then, was pro-life allowed to keep the title? Why was there no attempt to change -that- side’s framing? If they’re going to call what are now pro-choice advocates pro-abortion, then, really, that makes the pro-lifers anti-abortion. Which sounds great for them, until you start fighting back with the problems with a woman’s health in giving birth, or age, or the victim of rape, etc.Also, why does no one call out the pro-life faction, as they wish to be called, for their utter disdain for that very life if it grows up gay? Or atheist? Or a million other things?I think my other point is this: pro-life is -only- pro-life when it suits them. So how did we, and by we I mean those that came before as well as this generation (I’m only twenty-four, myself), allow them to keep a title, and frame a debate, so hypocritically?

Abortion is indeed awful, gut-wrenching and can be psychologically scarring. But no lawmaker sitting in his Georgetown brownstone should be telling me whether or not I can have one. Especially when said lawmaker also opposes birth control funding, which may reduce more unwanted pregnancies, and focuses solely on abstinence education, which obviously does not work.Women are not saying that abortions are a wonderful thing and everyone should have one by the time they are 30. We are saying that sometimes agonizing decisions need to be made, and we should be allowed to make them.And Mr. Steele, who obviously has never been in a position to make a decision about an abortion, does not seem to realize that sometime the decision to have an abortion is a decision supporting life. There are many shades of gray.

A further note: while I agree that the minority, zealously religious view of abortion as an evil plague deserves as little attention as, say, the same zealously religious view that homosexuals are possessed by demons (or thetans!), calling those same people out as “not Americans” is very much what occurred in 2001 when many of us tried to understand what drove terrorists to their acts, rather than give in blindly to petty slogans for comfort.These people are as American as, I assume, you and I. Their views may be fanatical and based upon imagination rather than fact, but it does not make then unAmerican.Tearing the Constitution to shreds while complaining that it’s just a, “Goddamned piece of paper” makes you unAmerican. Even if you are President of the United States.

Tim -Thank you for explaining your position, you and I and Bob and probably most, if not all, of the regulars here are on the same page. We’d like to see abortion only as a last resort when the woman’s life is threatened by the pregnancy. This would be the ideal. But life is not ideal. Shit happens.You covered things rather well, so I will just add the following to fill in the gaps.I don’t know how old you are, but I was in high school when Roe v. Wade was decided. Abortion was illegal in PA. Girls in my high school with unwanted pregnancies went to New York (if they could afford to). This upped the cost. I made sure I used birth control. I think most everyone did, but accidents happen. Prior to Roe v. Wade 2 to 3 dead women per month turned up in my county from botched abortions. Don’t know how many were hospitalized because only the dead ones made the papers. I don’t see a return to that situation as a desirable thing, at all.

Also, why does no one call out the pro-life faction, as they wish to be called, for their utter disdain for that very life if it grows up gay? Or atheist? Or a million other things?

Very excellent questions you ask. I am putting this out here in case our readers don’t know so don’t think that I think that you may not know these facts. I can’t make any assumptions.An anti-abortion movement started before Roe v. Wade and wend rabid after Roe v. Wade. If you listened to them the Armageddon had begun. For several years they call themselves the anti-abortion movement and were mostly ignored as the crackpots and religious fanatics that they were. They started calling their opposition pro-abortion. Somebody in the anti movement decided that the word abortion was very bad for their PR and invented the Pro-Life tag. So they were pro-life and we were pro-abortion. We continued to call them anti-abortion and started to call ourselves pro-choice.The media decided the labels war by consistently using pro-life for the anti-abortionists and pro-choice for the opposition. This is primarily because the anti-abortion crew were the incessantly violently loud minority that expended large amounts of effort into framing things they way they liked. They did not succeed in the pro-abortion tag however.As you and others including Bob have observed, Pro-Life is not a good tag for the anti-abortion faction. They have no problem with the assassination of Doctors or blowing up patients at clinics. They have no trouble getting involved in Family decisions either when they disagree, but they never offer to pay for the medical costs of overriding a family’s decision.As Bob has pointed out, it appears that to a pro-lifer life ends at birth and begins when dad came.I observe that the founding fathers were correct to separate religion and government.

Has anyone started a pool yet to bet on how much time Steele has left before he’s kicked to the curb?

Why is abortion “awful:?