Hacker News Reader

Comment by JTbane | Hacker News Reader

I find it disgusting that any place that purports to be an "abortion clinic" has nothing to do with medicine, and is actually a thinly veiled evangelical NGO that pressures young women to have children.

View on HN

They certainly do not purport to be an abortion clinic. They are a crisis pregnancy clinic. They give advice, support, and resources to mothers.

What are these resources and support you talk of? Do they provide housing for a homeless mother? How able food to make sure the mother and child is healthy? Health care during or after birth?

No? Sounds like these places are just predatory abuse centers, masquerading as "help"

Being pregnant does not make you a mother.

This kind of semantic argument does absolutely nothing to help anyone. Mother in place of 'mother-to-be' is extremely common in use.

If you were arguing that a pregnant person can identify as a father/father-to-be then you should probably have stated that.

I am arguing that using more emotionally charged language like “baby” and “mother” in place of a “fetus” and “pregnant woman” is manipulative.

I don't think that's where the front of any sort of meaningful battle lies, both are often a term of convenience or familiarity and not necessarily from an underlying agenda around abortion rights.

Further, attempt to stick to those words when consoling someone who lost their wanted pregnancy would come across as needlessly callous. . "I'm so sorry you lost that fetus, that's really tough experience for many formerly-pregnant people"

Context matters. It is a non-trivial issue when used in the context of terminating early pregnancy. Manipulating a teenager by telling her that she is a mother and she shouldn’t kill her baby is far more insidious than treating abortion as a women’s health issue, which it is.

The choice of words has a tremendous effect both on an individual and on the society. Ignoring this fact only leads to more misunderstandings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com