[Ads-l] re-antedating of "pro-life"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Great work Colin and Bill. Thanks for double-checking the citation,
Colin. Newspapers.com contains many metadata errors, and it is easy
for even a careful researcher to be led astray.

Here is an instance of “pro-life” that appeared in the London
periodical  “New Statesman” on August 15, 1969 within a letter from
Norman St. John-Stevas who was a Member of the U.K. Parliament for
Chelmsford. It is sometimes difficult (for me) to determine the
meaning of “pro-life” in early citations. I think that the lengthy
excerpt below shows that “pro-life” is being used to mean roughly
“anti-abortion” in this citation.

Date: August 15, 1969 (Date in page header)
Periodical: New Statesman
Periodical Location: London, England
Title of Letter To the Editor: Abortion in Perspective
Letter Author: Norman St. John-Stevas
Quote Page 211, Column 2
Database: ProQuest

[Begin excerpt]
Yet another correspondent, Mr Leavis,
blames me for the general religious intolerance
of 400 years ago, for the misuse of texts etc etc.
He asks whether there is an anti-abortionist
text. As a matter of fact there is, at least in
the sense of a pro-life text. The 139th psalm
declares:

It was you who created my inmost self,
and put me together in my mother's womb;
for all these mysteries I thank you:
for the wonder of myself, for the wonder of your works

You know me through and through,
from having watched my bones take shape
when I was being formed in secret,
knitted together in the limbo of the womb.

This beautiful passage does express exactly in
poetic form my own view of the value of life, of
the need to reverence it and respect it, especially
when it is in helpless form. Abortion injures not
only the unborn child but also the mother, ...
[End excerpt]

A strict interpretation might contend that this instance of "pro-life"
is a precursor, but I think it is close to the modern meaning.

Garson

On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 5:11 PM Bill Mullins <amcombill at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> 1969 Cleveland Plain Dealer 28 Sep. 28/1
> Pro-life, and pro-person, Pope Paul's encyclical may yet turn out to be also the defense of human sexuality against mere sex.
>
>
> 1970 Chicago Daily News 29 Apr 14/3
> Mrs. Cook, R.N., in a recent letter to you, states she has "been taught respect and preservation of life."  If this is her philosophy of life, she should also favor pro-life legalities.  Rather than destroying life, abortion by consent usually preserves life, i.e. the life of extra-uterine creatures.
>
>
> >
> > A couple years back Fred Shapiro shared a 1969 quote for "pro-life" (OED's
> > earliest quote being from 1971):
> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2020-
> > January/156379.html
> >
> > Unfortunately, it seems this was a case of bad newspapers.com metadata. The
> > quoted article was from 1989, which was mis-OCR'd as 1969.
> >
> > However I was able to find a genuine 1970 antedating from the May 6 issue of
> > The Ottawa Journal, also via newspapers.com: "Philip Cooper said he preferred
> > to describe the group he belongs to as pro-life rather than anti-abortion. The
> > organization believes human life exists from the moment of conception and
> > that any attempt to destroy that life is a crime."
> >
> > In case anyone is interested, I wrote up a little blog post about the origins of
> > "pro-life" and "pro-choice" (and the question of which came first), here:
> > https://colinmorris.github.io/blog/prolife-antedating
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org