I’m taking a break before starting work (yeah, that’s going well) because something in an AskReddit article made me think about something, and I thought I’d come share my revelation.

The “Objectivist Christian” labelled himself as pro-life, in that a foetus has a right to life and shouldn’t be aborted, however the government has no right to make it illegal. That spurred an argument that someone who calls themselves pro-life can’t also hold the opinion that it shouldn’t be regulated upon. A pro-life person must also want abortions to be illegal.

The guy insisted that they were two different arguments, and I agreed with him at first. The moral discussion of aborting is a completely different one to the legality of abortions. Just because you believe abortion is a woman’s prerogative, doesn’t mean you can’t also believe it should be illegal (or any other combination — though, the combination I just gave would be odd).

The countering person didn’t argue against that, and probably agreed with it. However, what they were getting upset about was that the label “pro-life” is socially accepted as “a life must be protected under the law”, a single idea. You can’t take a socially accepted term and  use it as you want, even if the literal sense of the word allows your definition.

Another example I was thinking of was the guy that was kicked out of university for calling himself  “African American”, although he was white but an African living in America. People were outraged that he’d call himself that, which is a name for a black person living in America, some people even thought it was racist.

So it’s clear that social labels need to be avoided whenever you’re talking about anything. Maybe they’re okay for the media to use, or in flippant conversation, but when you’re discussing your views you shouldn’t use terms like “pro-life” or “African American”. You need to say exactly what you mean.

NB: You’ll notice that I’ve not given my views on abortion, or anything really. I don’t intend to do that in this post, nor to discuss it here.