Jezebel has an amusing piece up on Wikipedia’s announcement that they’re going to settle the terms of debate around abortion rights once and for all:
In an announcement that sounds like something from the first Star Wars,, Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee has asked the Wikipedia community to weigh in on what articles on opposing views in the US abortion debate should be called once and for all. The rule of the commentariat will result in a binding change to titles about the way abortion’s discussed — at least on Wikipedia. It’s a question of balancing honesty with familiarity — entire books could be written about how anti-abortion policies actually remove the humanity and agency from pregnant women, and how outlawing abortion will result in women seeking unsafe abortions that could lead to injury and death, and how “pro-life” hospitals refuse to intervene in life-threatening pregnancies until the woman miscarries on her own, and how women and babies are healthiest when they can choose if and when to have children and how people who say they’re “pro-life” are not actually pro-life at all, and how in the face of these facts, the phrase “pro life” is sort of cruelly ironic (also, “pro-life” implies that there are “anti-life” people out there just encouraging every woman everywhere to have abortions all the time because it tickles and pleases Lord Satan or something). At the same time, the “Pro-life” movement, while it hasn’t succeeded at overturning Roe V. Wade or outlawing contraception, it has succeeded in giving itself a name, albeit an inaccurate one.
It’s a smart, funny article — but it’s on Jezebel, so duh, of course it’s good. The full thing’s here.
