Life

New Google Chrome Extension For Pro-Choice People

by Emma Cueto

The Internet can be amazing and it can be awful, but thanks to Google Chrome extensions, at least it's also customizable. And there's a new Google Chrome extension that will change the term "pro-life" to "anti-choice," which might help keep your frustration level a little lower when reading abortion-related coverage.

Although the term "pro-life" is the favored term among people who oppose abortion access, people have been pointing out for years that the term is misleading. For one thing, plenty of anti-abortion activists oppose abortion access even in instances where an abortion would save the life of the pregnant woman, and sometimes even deny that such a situation even exists, despite medical consensus to the contrary.

Plus there's the kind of galling fact that the same conservatives who call themselves pro-life also support things like war and torture and unmanned drone strikes and the death penalty. The same conservatives who care so much about fetuses send the National Guard to confront unarmed refugee children. The same conservatives who think life matters so much in the womb actively oppose any effort to save the more than 30,000 people killed by firearms each year.

So really, supposedly "pro-life" advocates don't have a deep commitment to life so much as they think that some lives are more important than others — and that apparently fetuses are more important than women.

Basically, by this point, any time I see the phrase "pro-life" it makes me want to roll my eyes. But since most news coverage still uses the term "pro-life" (though this, too, is changing), this can make reading it a frustrating experience to say the least. But never fear! The new Google Chrome extension, Choice Language, will replace the term "pro-life" with "anti-choice" anytime it appears in your browser.

The extension was created by the National Institute for Reproductive Health. In the product description, they explain,

Tired of seeing the fraught term "pro-life" used ubiquitously and incorrectly, we conceived of this extension to shift the language of the discussion towards a more accurate framework. Using the language of pro-choice and anti-choice eliminates the sneaky and damning implications of a model built around "pro-life" versus pro-choice language.

Amen.

So browse in peace, fellow pro-choice people. Between this and the extension to eliminate Donald Trump from your browser, the Internet just became a much more inviting place.

Image: Giphy