I like people who deliberately say provocative things. I tend to do the same. It's fun and funny, not to mention challenging.

I'm dating one of those people right now. Over the weekend he said, as if in passing, "I'm anti-abortion." I stopped him, and asked him. He said, "I'm anti-abortion because at the end of the day, my opinion doesn't matter." He was right in this instance from the angle that, as a man, his opinion as to whether a woman, any woman, including a woman he has impregnated, should have the baby or not doesn't matter. The person who gets to decide to keep a child is the person with the child actually growing inside of it.

However, as a person dating _refugee_, he was entirely wrong to say, "I can be anti-abortion if I want because my opinion at the end of the day doesn't matter." To refugee, it matters 100% - NOT in the way that it would force my decision if I became pregnant, but as in "I want to date someone with similar morals and thoughts." I went back to the statement after he tried to flippantly dismiss it. I explained, "I need to know why you say you are anti-abortion, because I am not comfortable dating someone who claims to be such."

We settled the discussion down to the point of, "He doesn't believe abortion should be used as first-line birth control," but were unable to continue it due to time restraints. FWIW, yes, loves, I already know why this is a stupid reason to be anti-abortion and am aware that the vast majority of abortions are not used as such and so on. We talked about how an abortion is not without its own costs and how it might be foolish to think of abortions as generally/widely being used as first-line birth control.

This is one of my non-negotiables. I cannot, refuse to date someone who is or claims to be anti-abortion because to me, if you are against abortion, you are not only against a specific course of action, but you are opposed to my life and its existence in its current form.

I think at the end of the day S/O is not really anti-abortion, but I am not comfortable with him flinging the phrase around that he is, even if it's not true, either.