Talk:United States anti-abortion movement

Title change proposed

Returning to the issue raised by @Bobnorwal: last December, there's a consistency issue in the use of the term "pro-life" in the title. The title should be United States anti-abortion movement. Please note that other similar articles use the term "anti-abortion," for example, Anti-abortion movements. The article's lede even explains why "anti-abortion" is the neutral term.NightHeron (talk) 23:36, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

• Support Agree that "pro-life" is promotional marketing term that means in fact "anti-abortion." You could imagine pro-life groups that try to improve people's quality of life, e.g. with better child nutrition and healthcare for all. Or pro-life groups that try to prevent unnecessary deaths, e.g. by opposing assault weapons or capital punishment. But that is not at all what "pro-life" groups care about. Also, what NightHeron said. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:14, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
• I'd be more tempted by Abortion opposition in the United States. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:16, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
• Trying to move this to wider discussion, so pinging Template:U:NatGertler, Template:U:NightHeron, Template:U:Bobnorwal to discuss. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:32, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
• This should work better: NatGertler, NightHeron, Bobnorwal (I pang myself!) --Nat Gertler (talk)

= Requested move 19 May 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Both moved. This has been open for 18 days, and there have been no comments in 2 days. There is a consensus to move the articles, and - as pointed out by a number of people - this makes the articles consistent with others. COMMONNAME has a number of exceptions, which have been brought up by the majority here. Black Kite (talk) 20:09, 6 June 2018 (UTC) Black Kite (talk) 20:09, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

---

• United States pro-life movement → United States anti-abortion movement
• United States pro-choice movement → United States abortion-rights movement

Consistency. Similar articles such as Anti-abortion movements use "anti-abortion" not the promotional term "pro-life." HouseOfChange (talk) 19:32, 19 May 2018 (UTC)--Relisting. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:59, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Not just promotional, but often quite hypocritical. The "United States pro-life movement" tends to be populated heavily with people who are also pro-death penalty and pro-war, neither of which tend to involve protecting life. HiLo48 (talk) 04:08, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

As others have said, the need for this name change follows from the consistency criterion in WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, along with WP:NPOVTITLE.NightHeron (talk) 20:30, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. "pro-life movement" dominates the Google Ngram chart over the alternative - even moreso when limited to American English (aka US). There is no WP:NPOVTITLE issue, or at least, such concerns are present no matter which title of the two is used. Consistency is only one of the five WP:CRITERIA, and its the last one. The current title meets all four others.-- Netoholic @ 18:18, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Comment I did a simple google search for "anti-abortion movement" versus "pro-life movement." The former has significantly more hits (as of May 2018) than the latter: "About 4 950 000 results" (anti-abortion movement) vs "About 4 280 000 results" (pro-life movement). Also as per consistency, if you search "pro-life" in Wikipedia search box you are sent to this page Anti-abortion movements. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:39, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Ye olde "simple Google search" is fraught with problems. First, search results are biased to you by the search engine. Search engines also skew heavily to current, online resources whereas something like Ngrams has the benefit of a long-term pool of published works which is rigorously weighted. See WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY and Wikipedia:Search engine test. Those "millions of results" you see could be way off depending on so many factors that it is unreliable to ever base judgment off "a simple google search". -- Netoholic @ 20:21, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

• The following excerpts from the article itself make it clear why the term "pro-life" in the title violates WP:NPOVTITLE:

Both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are examples of terms labeled as political framing: they are terms which purposely try to define their philosophies in the best possible light, while by definition attempting to describe their opposition in the worst possible light.

and

The Associated Press encourages journalists to use the terms "abortion rights" and "anti-abortion".

NightHeron (talk) 19:43, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Footnoting NightHeron, see AP stylebook on "abortion". HouseOfChange (talk) 20:21, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Here's the thing: neither of these titles meets WP:COMMONNAME, if you look at the NGram for what we actually propose as the title. The title is bad on multiple levels, including as a grammatical construct. While there may be disagreemnts over what it should be changed to, it should be changed to something else. --Nat Gertler (talk) 21:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

If you read WP:COMMONNAME, paying special attentions to the examples given to illustrate it, you'll see that that policy is simply not the issue here. Both pro-life and anti-abortion are extremely common terms that are easily understood and recognized in English, so both of them satisfy the policy. The issue, rather, is NPOV. As explained above, the current title violates WP:NPOVTITLE.NightHeron (talk) 23:42, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

• Support move. We should not use politically polemical terms like this; "anti-abortion movement" is far more clear, accurate, and objective. The fact that the Associated Press stylebook recommends this phrasing bolsters the point. Neutrality^talk 00:30, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support move per Neutrality. --JBL (talk) 00:51, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Following merge/ping by Galobtter (thanks), clarifying that I support both moves. --JBL (talk) 17:53, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support as proposed. Neutral name for politically charged topic, especially since Pro-choice redirects to Abortion-rights movements. Binksternet (talk) 01:20, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support I made a comment above, but now need to formally note my support. The present name is for marketing alone. It is not the truth. HiLo48 (talk) 04:27, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose:

1. NPOVTITLE is being erroneously applied. The policy is written in clear and unambiguous language: "Resolving such debates depends on whether the article title is a name derived from reliable sources or a descriptive title created by Wikipedia editors." In this case "pro-life" is used extensively by reliable sources. "Pro-life" was not created by WP editors. NPOVTITLE in fact supports the current title "pro-life."
2. As Netoholic points out the Google Ngram results definitively reflect that "pro-life" is more widely used and thus per COMMONNAME the title must be "pro-life."

The arguments presented and policies cited clearly demonstrate to an objective person that the title should be "pro-life." Counterarguments for "anti-abortion" are not based on policy--well not NPOVTITLE--and in fact are based on WP:IDONTLIKEIT. – Lionel^(talk) 10:05, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Please drop the insults. Many arguments have been made against the current title. Debate them rather than condemning other editors. HiLo48 (talk) 10:17, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

FWIW, while I disagree with Lionel's assessment, it clearly contains an argument. (It would be better without "an objective person", of course.) --JBL (talk) 12:27, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

• Information There is a parallel move request at United States pro-choice movement for that article to have its name changed to United States abortion rights movement. Both articles are outliers from the usual Wikipedia naming scheme, which repeatedly refers (and redirects) queries about "Pro-life X" and "Pro-Choice Y" to "Anti-abortion X" and "Abortion rights Y]. I believe both moves will improve Wikipedia. HouseOfChange (talk) 14:05, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support I was notified of the discussion via Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity/Noticeboard‎. The article does not discuss "life" but simply abortion. If the article discussed anti-euthanasia efforts, or anti-death penalty efforts, or anti-gun rights, I would consider leaving the article here. This point is elaborated by Christian author Shane Claiborne at https://www.redletterchristians.org/praying-with-our-feet/ and the point has been made by multiple other Christian authors and speakers. As a Wikipedian, we should identify article subjects using neutral terms, not the (invalid) political framing that they want to use to describe themselves. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:52, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose along with coordinated move request. Please review WP:RFC/AAMC for why these titles, which were considered as options, were not selected by the community, and review WP:RFC/AAT for a hint of the kind of damage giving these articles titles which are not equivalently weighted in propaganda value can bring about. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:13, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. There are 19,000,000 Google hits for United States pro-life movement, while only 2,890,000 Google hits for United States anti-abortion movement. The people in the movement themselves refer to it as the United States pro-life movement and renaming it to the title requested is POV pushing. Why? Because this request would be akin to requesting to move United States "pro-choice movement" to United States "anti-life movement." desmay (talk) 20:59, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Invalid evidence. Google searches are tailored for you personally. If I searched I would get a different result. There is no logic in the final sentence. HiLo48 (talk) 23:08, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

• Support (I didn't formally vote in my previous comment). NPOV is a basic pillar of Wikipedia; COMMONNAME is not. Moreover, it's clear that no title under consideration violates WP:COMMONNAME because all are easily recognized terms. The terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are misleading and inaccurate, as well as politically slanted. The issue is: one side believes in prohibition of abortion; the other side believes in the right to abortion subject to certain restrictions (depending on stage of pregnancy). The proposed titles accurately reflect that and, most importantly, are neutral.NightHeron (talk) 00:38, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Very well put. NPOV is not negotiable, while WP:AT is simply a means to an end. Andrewa (talk) 18:54, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per the arguments enumerated by Lionelt, who has demonstrated that appeals to NPOV are invalid. Lepricavark (talk) 01:52, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

How can you claim that there's no NPOV issue when the article itself says that the term "pro-life" is an example of political framing?NightHeron (talk) 16:49, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I can do it very easily: there's no NPOV issue. Lepricavark (talk) 14:56, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support The movement is about abortion, not life. "Pro-life" is what some people think anti-abortion is, and there are many who don't agree. I seccond "NPOV is a basic pillar of Wikipedia; COMMONNAME is not." by NightHeron. --Comedora (talk) 09:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

• Support. Anti-abortion is accurate and descriptive, and should be preferred to the slogans used by either side, who are both organised and funded to the point that deciding the most common name is going to be problematical. Andrewa (talk) 07:48, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose for reasons stated by Netoholic, Lionelt, and Chaos5023. Ltwin (talk) 12:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support There are five equal WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. The importance of COMMONNAME is routinely overestimated. In this case it can't even be definitively established what the COMMONNAME is, so that obviously should not be the decisive rationale. Both are recognizable. Neither is natural. United States anti-abortion movement is both more precise and more consistent with other articles.LeadSongDog come howl! 14:45, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Both options are linguistically awkward. "United States" is not naturally read as an adjective. Add to that the fact that abortion opposition here is not fully separate from elsewhere (as judge the US campaigners in the recent Irish referendum), and that "United States pro-life movement" only gets 94 Google results (yes, it says a few thousand at first, but try clicking through - and many of those results are citing this article) so and I really want some other choice - most particularly "Abortion opposition in the United States", but either "Pro-life movement in the United States" or "Anti-abortion movement in the United States" would be better than what we have. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:58, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Another possibility would be "Anti-abortion movement (United States)", which to me sounds less awkward. If you Nat Gertler want to file a different page move request with a different title proposal, that is also fine, but please do it on both articles in parallel. I think it will be simpler to solve the "pro-life" vs. "anti-abortion" question first, and then to move on to consider localization. HouseOfChange (talk) 15:56, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
    • Rather than parenthetics, the more natural-language forms would be "Anti-abortion movement in the United States" and "Abortion rights movement in the United States", but either way could work.LeadSongDog come howl! 16:10, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
    • I am feeling a bit low-energy at the moment to be starting multiple discussions (although it does make me flinch to think that we'll be setting up a move just to set up another move.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:24, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
    • I'm not opposed to changing the grammar, but I don't think it's necessary. If you do a search for Wikipedia articles starting with the words "United States," you'll find plenty that have the same structure as the proposed title being discussed, e.g. United States elections, United States dollar.NightHeron (talk) 16:52, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
      • Ah, but United States elections is just a redirect... to Elections in the United States, a page title that fits in with what I suggest. United States dollar is the WP:COMMONNAME for it. United States pro-life movement is just a term made up for Wikipedia. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:15, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
        • "United States anti-abortion movement" would be just as "made up for Wikipedia" as the current title, and the current one is most commonly used in sources. --1990'sguy (talk) 03:28, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
          • No. It would not be "made up for Wikipedia". It would simply be good encyclopaedic English. HiLo48 (talk) 03:50, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
        • Okay, but there are others, e.g., United States territorial acquisitions and United States federal budget, which are not redirects.NightHeron (talk) 18:14, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Can we please use this discussion to consider "pro-life" vs "anti-abortion" and (if anybody wants to create another section for it) to talk about ways to describe localization somewhere else? HouseOfChange (talk) 18:21, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Agree that we need to focus here... somehow. And that's one way of doing it, and I have no better suggestion... it's now a mess however we try to go forward! Andrewa (talk) 18:48, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose: Per WP:COMMONNAME, as well as the reasoning by Netoholic, Lionelt, and Chaos5023. --1990'sguy (talk) 03:28, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

• The empirical evidence disproves the idea that "pro-life" is appreciably more common. A search of Google Books for "pro-life movement" OR "pro-life activists" + United States yields some 11,000 hits; a search for "anti-abortion movement" OR "anti-abortion activists" + United States hits more than 17,000 hits. Neutrality^talk 04:54, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

• Shameful skewing of statistics — you should not be ORing in activists, but rather comparing the two options presented in the move request. I also note you didn't include search links as proof. In reality, "pro-life movement" AND "United States" = ~8800 results and "anti-abortion movement" AND "United States" = ~6000 results. This matches with the above Google Ngram link I provided above in my vote and solidifies the proof of WP:COMMONNAME. -- Netoholic @ 20:04, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

• First of all, that's not what "OR" means. Second, you need to tone down the rhetoric ("shameful skewing"). Neutrality^talk 01:16, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• Support. They have done a very successful job of branding, but in the end the title is POV. "Pro-life" movement is responsible for closing down women's preventive healthcare clinics and "pro-life" states also have statistically worse neonatal and maternal mortality rates. They are also generally the most vehemently pro the death penalty, less likely to support medicaid expansion (which disproportionately impacts single mothers and their children), and their senators are the ones that voted to end CHIP, as well. So they are only pro-life until the mother goes into labor, after that they appear to completely stop caring. Anti-abortion is more accurate and neutral. It's not our job to be their spin doctors. Guy (Help!) 15:07, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

• Absolutely nothing in this cites Wikipedia naming guidelines or external evidence. Its just a rant. -- Netoholic @ 20:04, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

And that's just an attack on other editors. HiLo48 (talk) 00:08, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• Support as an accurate and neutral description of the movement. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:49, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose for reasons stated above עם ישראל חי (talk) 17:06, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support A shift to a more neutral and precise title. While it's been pointed out that WP:COMMONNAME isn't preeminent among naming conventions, both terms are commonly recognizable as established by narrowed Google searches or NGrams as established above, so it isn't much of a concern anyway.--tronvillain (talk) 22:59, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Unreal7 (talk) 17:24, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support According to the summary of WP:TITLE guidelines, "Article titles should be recognizable, concise, natural, precise, and consistent." Let's go through one by one:

  Recognizable - both are easily recognizable

  Concise - both are similarly concise

  Natural - both are similarly natural

  Precise - "Anti-abortion" is more precise than "Pro-life". "Pro-life" does not mean "anti-abortion" to everybody. For example, Google defines pro-life as "opposing abortion and euthanasia."[1]. The Pro-life_(disambiguation) page also lists other uses of the term such as "Opposition to the death penalty", "Opposition to euthanasia" and "opposition to embryonic stem cell destruction." To me, this all strongly indicates that "anti-abortion" more precisely defines the movement described in this article.

  Consistent - "Anti-abortion" seems more consistent with other articles on Wikipedia. For example pro-life redirects to Anti-abortion movements; Pro-life-feminism redirects to Anti-abortion feminism; List of pro-life organizations in the United States links to List of anti-abortion organizations in the United States; Roman Catholic Pro-life movement redirects to Catholic Church and abortion, etc.In fact, besides this page, I couldn't find a single example of an "Anti-abortion" title redirecting to a "Pro-life" title.

Conclusion: If going purely by the guidelines outlined in WP:TITLE, there is no question that this article should be renamed to United States anti-abortion movement between the two options listed in the move request. Lonehexagon (talk) 23:15, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

•  Comment: I have relisted this, since I've merged in the move at the pro-choice talk; it appears that people almost entirely agree on moving both/neither, with the latter move merely having a subset of the participation. @HouseOfChange, HiLo48, NightHeron, Netoholic, NatGertler, Neutrality, Joel B. Lewis, Binksternet, Lionelt, Walter Görlitz, Chaos5023, Desmay, Andrewa, Lepricavark, Comedora, Ltwin, LeadSongDog, 1990'sguy, JzG, Beyond My Ken, AmYisroelChai, Tronvillain, Unreal7, and Lonehexagon: pinging everyone to let them consider the addition of the pro-choice move. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:59, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
• support move, following RS and resisting branding/PR. Jytdog (talk) 17:40, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
• Still Support moves to neutral terminology in spite of the previous consensus. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:28, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose due to concerns about following common-name policy and lack of convincing arguments that would favor the move. Red Slash 15:15, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support due to the proposed name being both neutral and technically accurate. It's disingenuous to claim the current name is the common name when it's only used by one side of the argument. (And the same goes for pro-choice.) Bradv 15:26, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

I note the discussion at Talk:Anti-abortion movements#Requested move 1 June 2018 but decided to try to centralise discussion here. Happy to take it to another forum if others wish.

Let me try a little summary and analysis.

There are two opposing, recognizable factions on the issue of abortion morality and law, both deserving one or more articles.

One refers to themselves as pro choice and refers to the other as anti abortion. The other refers to themselves as pro life and the other by various names of which pro abortion is one. All four terms are in common use but highly politically charged.

Pro choice and pro life are both political slogans, and poorly describe the actual topics.

Anti abortion is accurate and NPOV. But a name for the opposing movement is problematical. Abortion rights still has a political flavour to it, and is not the preferred term used by either faction, both of them highly organised and well funded. So abortion rights is unlikely to be as common as pro choice or pro abortion. Can we do better? Andrewa (talk) 18:51, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

The preferred terms used by factions is what we're trying to avoid, as their preferred terms are spin. A good neutral source like the AP style guide is good to go with. Having said that, I think we can do well with less trying to name a "movement" (as if it's a single thing), and rather go with "Abortion rights support in the United State", "Abortion opposition in the United States". --Nat Gertler (talk)

In addition to "pro-choice," another preferred term among advocates of that position is "reproductive rights movement." That name, however, could muddy the waters, because it can be interpreted to include many other things besides abortion (pre-conception birth control, access to prenatal care, anti-forced-sterilization, etc.). Also, I don't see why a movement isn't a "thing." Of course, it's not centralized or monolithic. But see, for example, Anti-war movement, which includes a wide gamut of historical movements in one article.NightHeron (talk) 20:11, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

The preferred terms used by factions is what we're trying to avoid, as their preferred terms are spin... yes and no. We want article names that are neutral, see Wikipedia:Article titles#Neutrality in article titles. But that doesn't mean avoiding a common name just because it is also used in "spin" (positive or negative). The problem is, we consider only secondary sources in deciding what is a common name, and one of the most important techniques of spin is to make what's really a primary source look like a reliable secondary source. Difficult! Andrewa (talk) 06:54, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Three terms to avoid

As stated above I think that pro-life, pro-choice and pro-abortion are all terms that we need to avoid in article titles on this and related topics. This isn't a poll, but I'd welcome any comments on whether that's reasonable. If it is, then we may be able to build consensus for some sort of move. Andrewa (talk) 07:00, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

No archive links?

Can someone who understands how archiving works please adjust the settings so that there are links to the archives of this talk page? Thanks, JBL (talk) 22:23, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

The problem is that this article and talk page have been moved a number of times, and apparently on some of the moves the subpages that contain the archives were not also moved. The archive box assumes that the archive page names have the format "Talk/United States pro-life movement/Archive #", where the "#" is 1, 2, 3, etc. I'll see if I can figure out what the names of the various archive subpages should be, but it may take an administrator to fix it. Indyguy (talk) 23:39, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes sense. Hopefully it is fixable (and then not immediately broken again by the RfC above :) ). --JBL (talk) 00:50, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I was able to move them to the correct name. There are 7 archives. Indyguy (talk) 02:37, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you! --JBL (talk) 12:24, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Anti-abortion movements which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 08:16, 1 June 2018 (UTC)