Like Secular Pro-Life, I’m not keen on this new “People of Choice” site. For starters, I don’t like modeling anything after the nasty, classist People of Wal-Mart. It’s unbecoming anyone who claims to respect all human beings equally.
For another — does anyone think that it would be hard to put together a “People of Pro-Life” site that had tons of sexist, hateful, and ignorant commentary? I could make a good start in about five minutes using only comments from elected officials, never mind random internet commenters. Would we like it if that was passed off as “exposing the words and behaviors of the ‘pro-life’ community”?
Some of the material on the “People of Choice” site absolutely deserves to be exposed and called out. There are pro-choice people out there who hate women and support abortion so they don’t have to be responsible “if that dumb bitch gets herself pregnant.” There are pro-choice people who support abortion because they want poor women and women of color to have fewer kids. There are pro-choice people who revel in how dehumanizing and hateful they can be toward unborn human beings. There are pro-choice people whose arguments are based on ignorance of how sexual reproduction works. But there’s a way to criticize fact-free arguments and racist/misogynist/*ist ideas without trying to make a community’s worst members into the face of the whole community. That’s dishonest and lazy. Most pro-choice people are really just trying to do what they think is best, the same way we are. I disagree with them about what’s best, but that doesn’t make them the enemy.
