Is Anyone Really "Pro-Abortion"?

Lately people who actively fight to preserve legal abortion object to being labeled "pro-abortion". They are not "pro-abortion", they insist, they are "pro-choice". Indeed, they will often go on to say that "no one is pro-abortion".

But their own publications sound distinctly "pro-abortion" to me. Here are a few quotes from pro-choice people that I found in a few minutes just by visiting their web sites:

So what happens if Roe v. Wade is reversed? Most people believe that the question of abortion will revert to individual state legislatures. Will that be devastating for countless women? Most assuredly.

National Organization for Women, Not Just Semantics

If someone says that the loss of something will be "devastating for countless" people, doesn't that pretty clearly imply that they're for it?

The world we want includes access to safe and legal abortion care ... To participate fully in society, we must be free to answer for ourselves whether we are ready and capable of being parents. To achieve this world, we must continue to strive for reproductive freedom for everyone.

American Civil Liberties Union, The World We Want

If the writer is of the opinion that "the world we want" includes "safe and legal abortion", and this is essential for women to "participate fully in society", doesn't this make her "for" abortion?

[M]any demonstrable health benefits — physical, emotional, and social — have accrued to Americans since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in its decision, Roe v. Wade.

Planned Parenthood, Medical and Social Health Benefits Since Abortion Was Made Legal in the U.S.

Actually, we didn't even need to go past the title of that one to show that Planned Parenthood clearly believes that abortion is a positive good.

Not from a pro-choice web site, but from the library of the United States Supreme Court:

In reaffirming Roe, the Casey Court described the centrality of “the decision whether to bear ... a child” ... to a woman’s “dignity and autonomy,” her “personhood” and “destiny,” her “conception of . . . her place in society.” [Citations omitted]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice, Dissent, Gonzales v Carhart

If I said that I believed that something was "central" to my "dignity", "personhood", and "destiny", would it be fair for you to conclude that I was "for" that something?

It's a funny thing about pro-abortion people -- and after finding the above quotes I will not shy from calling them "pro-abortion". They are the only activists I know of who campaign vigorously for some legal right, who build organizations solely devoted to making and keeping this a legal right, who seek government funding so that more people can exercise this right ... and who then claim that they are not actually for it.

Have you ever heard the National Rifle Association insist that they are not "pro-gun" and that they do not encourage people to own guns? Have you ever heard the League of Women Voters insist that they are not "pro-voting" and that they do not encourage people to vote? Have you ever heard the National Gay-Lesbian Alliance say that they are not "pro-gay" and that they do not encourage gay marriage? One could go on and on for every activist group out there.

Except the pro-abortion people. They are the only activists who deny that they are for something at the same time that they fight tooth and nail to defend and encourage it.

You have to wonder why. Could it be that even the most ardent pro-abortion activists in the country, despite all their tortuous logical arguments about how abortion is a positive good, don't really believe it themselves? That even they consider abortion to be distasteful if not actually evil, and have to back away from truly endorsing it? I hope that's the case. Because the only other explanation I can think of is that they are lying and trying to deceive the American people when they claim to not be "for abortion".