[Ads-l] "Pro-Choice" Was a Reaction to "Pro-Life"

[Shapiro, Fred]

I was William Safire's primary source for information about word-histories, and I have a higher regard for him (linguistically but not politically) than most students of language.  However, I have long taken issue with his statement that the term "pro-choice" preceded the term "pro-life."  To me the pro-life-before-pro-choice chronology rings true on a semantic basis, with "pro-life" being a more basic term and "pro-choice" a more imaginative one reacting to the earlier slogan.  If one does as much research on word-coinages as I have, one develops a sense of the rhythms of neologization.

Therefore I was surprised to realize that the OED "pro-choice" first use citation was dated 1969, whereas no one has found a clearcut use of "pro-life" meaning "anti-abortion" prior to 1970.

However, my theory (also the theory of many students of feminist history) is borne out by the citations.  The OED's 1969 "pro-choice" citation is said by them to come from the Oxnard (Cal.) Press-Courier, Dec. 10, 1969, page 7.  However, Newspaperarchive has that issue and page, and there is no use of "pro-choice" on the page.  A Newspapers.com search does retrieve the exact same words as those in the OED citation, from two California newspapers dated Dec. 10,, 1989, so clearly the OED citation is a mistake.

Fred Shapiro


________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Colin Morris <colin at CS.TORONTO.EDU>
Sent: Friday, June 3, 2022 4:33 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: re-antedating of "pro-life"

A couple years back Fred Shapiro shared a 1969 quote for "pro-life" (OED's
earliest quote being from 1971):
https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fpipermail%2Fads-l%2F2020-January%2F156379.html&data=05%7C01%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C14522d8805194249169c08da45a065c9%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C637898852843908427%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=0HllMpwD4giGo3WMgG5GtT0B2k%2FST0qi7UZt71wb7K4%3D&reserved=0

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://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcolinmorris.github.io%2Fblog%2Fprolife-antedating&data=05%7C01%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C14522d8805194249169c08da45a065c9%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C637898852843908427%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=8HYtQh7CiM%2FIbvMgrMlzHIVI4iDS60DeFvbZFvqy5os%3D&reserved=0



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