According the NPR Ombudsman they have been having quite a debate over abortion rights language. Some listeners have been confronting them with the problem of defining "pro-life".
Don't we all consider ourselves pro-life? From time to time I get these irritating push-poll robo-calls that start out: "Do you consider yourself pro-life? Say 'yes' or 'no'". I am sorely tempted to say "Why, no. Actually I am pro-death, bwahahahaha." But instead I say 'yes'. This probably explains their stats on how many people define themselves as pro-life, but I digress.
Come below to see the the conclusion NPR has finally reached.
March 18
"I am a 'pro-life' voter," said Hamilton, of Washington, DC. "For instance, I would vote for someone opposed to the death penalty over someone in favor of it. However, 'opposed to the death penalty' would be a better, more accurate description of my position. Pretty sure I'm not who [the correspondent] is talking about."
Since 2005, it has been NPR's policy to use the term pro-choice to identify anyone who advocates on behalf of abortion rights and pro-life for anyone who advocates in opposition to abortion.
"The terms pro-choice and pro-life are in such widespread use these days that they're just as neutral as their alternatives (abortion rights advocate or abortion rights opponent)," said the 2005 memo authored by three people who are no longer at NPR.
I checked with NBC, CBS, CNN, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer and not one of them uses the terms "pro-choice" or "pro-life."
Ironically, Bill Marimow, now editor of the Inquirer, was one of the three senior NPR editors who approved the "pro-choice/pro-life" language five years ago. Now, his newspaper's staff uses the terms anti-abortion and abortion rights advocates.
http://www.npr.org/...
The report promised that the Managing Editor, Dave Sweeney, would be reviewing the policy. His memo, posted on March 24, spells out the new guidelines:
On the air, we should use "abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)" and "abortion rights opponent(s)" or derivations thereof (for example: "advocates of abortion rights"). It is acceptable to use the phrase "anti-abortion", but do not use the term "pro-abortion rights".
http://www.npr.org/...
There is really nothing much I can add, other than another excerpt from the March 18 posting, which pretty much nails the issue:
"By positioning themselves as 'pro-life', this group essentially won the war of words," said Andrea Tyler, linguistics professor at Georgetown University. "These labels set up particular frames. It doesn't seem like a good thing to be anti-choice. But it's worse to be anti-life. So there's an inequality in the frames when you say pro-life and pro-choice. Being the opposite of pro-choice is not as bad as being the opposite of pro-life."