Avatar Placeholder
Unverified comment
Navi
Lately I’ve seen even more confusion around the term “elective”. In most areas of medicine a procedure is considered to be elective if it does not need to be done immediately. For example a woman may have an elective (scheduled) cesarean section if she is far enough along in her pregnancy but not in active labour, while an urgent (emergency) cesarean section would be one that has to be done right away. But both surgeries may be considered medically necessary. Radical prostatectomy or installing a pacemaker would also be elective surgeries. Pro-choice people sometimes exploit these semantics, arguing that all abortions are medically necessary even if they are elective. So maybe we should use a different term other than “elective” (“voluntary”, “abortion on demand/request”, “abortions for socioeconomic reasons”). Though asking good clarification questions and agreeing on the definitions early on would also resolve these problems, assuming the pro-choice person is arguing in good faith rather than trolling. Thoughts?