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Women’s Rights and Personhood: Reframing the Abortion Debate

Social justice issues often suffer from a crisis of framing.  Whether it’s “welfare queens” versus “working poor,” “lazy Injuns” versus “colonialism,” or “special rights” versus “marriage equality,” how an issue is presented has massive effects on the perception of what’s at stake, and what the people on each side are actually trying to achieve.  Perhaps nowhere is this more visible than in the battle over abortion rights.  While advocates for marriage equality have largely succeeded in making sure the public understands that the fight is for marriage equality, and that what’s at stake is increasingly out-of-touch religious groups’ influence on American politics and people’s right to visit their loved ones in hospitals, too many people have seriously borked ideas of what the abortion debate is about.

A lot of people think it’s about babies.
A lot of people think it’s about sex.
A lot of people think it’s about birth control.
A lot of people think it’s about religious freedom.

And it’s about all those things…just not in the way that most of those people think it is.

What it absolutely, utterly, unequivocally, ineffably, undeniably, explicitly, and totally is NOT about is “life.”

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Women’s Rights and Personhood: Reframing the Abortion Debate