Abortion: The fastest way to label someone.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/22/abortion.rally/?hpt=Sbin

Thirty-Seven years ago the Supreme Court established a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Long before this ruling the issue of abortion was one that divided the population along strong lines. These lines continue to divide people to this day. The question I want to ask is why is abortion so controversial? How do people usually define their stance on abortion? Then how do we use a person's stance to then come to larger conclusions about that person?

Republican or Democrat. Conservative or Liberal. Religious or Secular. Pro Life or Pro Choice. These tend to be the two different sides of the abortion debate. Republican conservatives who are religious are the ones who are considered pro life. Democratic liberals who are secular are pro choice. Obviously it goes without saying that there are many other elements of background that constitute a person's stance on abortion. For example, many feminists view abortion as a necessary right to promote equality. As one pro choice supporter states in the cnn article, "And no, nobody's religious conviction justifies taking women's ability to shape their own futures away from them."

The issue of abortion is always raised in elections and in the political sphere of discussion because it somehow reveals more about a person based on his stance on the issue. A person who is against abortion shows themselves to be of strong moral and religious conviction. A person who is pro choice indicates a liberal who is then likely to support other liberal propositions like affirmative action. It is with these associations that the political sphere generally gets divided and controlled. Barack Obama makes a good statement about the lack of definition however when it comes to using one issue in making assumptions about the larger population. In his famous 2004 Democratic National Convention speech he says , "The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states." Although this statement maybe true to some extent, the issue of abortion represents a barometer of where people fall on the scale of Liberal to Conservative and Religious to Secular and for this reason I think it remains a big issue to this day.