Typical stylebook

I worked in reference publishing at my last job. We also had a style guide that said do not use the term pro-life. (I used it anyway and got away with it.)

Do journalists have souls like the rest of us?

Supporters of legal abortion used to call themselves “pro-abortion” and later switched to “pro-choice” for public relations reasons.

An editorial in the July 2, 1977 New Republic
deplored a House vote to ban the use of federal money to pay for abortions along with a Supreme Court decision that had been issued three
days later that neither the Constitution nor federal Medicaid legislation prevented states from barring the use of Medicaid money for abortion, apart from special cases as when the life of the mother was threatened.

One paragraph began:

“The pro-abortion forces have brought this disaster upon themselves. Or rather they themselves have brought it upon hundreds of thousands of poor women who will be forced to bear and raise children they don’t want; and upon the taxpayers who will be forced to support many of these unwanted children. By relying on the courts to do their job for them, they have abandoned the processes of democracy to the ardent pro-lifers….”

Note that this strongly pro-abortion editorial also referred to “pro-lifers”.