"Chance"

A news article and its comments led me to do a little statistical research, out of curiosity. This is what I found.

It may shock you to know that all U.S. women have a 43% chance of having an abortion before they turn 45.
(from Adoption Information)

A 43% CHANCE??? Is that like the chance I have of being involved in an automobile accident through no fault of my own? Or the chance I have of developing a chronic disease? Or maybe it's like the chance I have of being the victim of a crime.

Seriously.

Let me spell this out. Chance carries with it the connotation of inevitability. It is something that happens randomly, that cannot be controlled. Check the dictionary. Denotatively, absolutely, chance can mean probability, which carries a more neutral connotation of the relative frequency of a particular event. Unless you're reading a word problem from an eighth grade math book, however, chance is not typically used in that way. It's something accidental, unexpected, unpredictable. Hence, we have games of chance, coincidences that happen by chance, and, as chance would have it.

It may shock you, but I do not have a 43% chance of having an abortion before I turn 45. Because abortion is not something that happens randomly, unpredictably, inevitably. It is something people choose. I can see how those "ch" words could be confusing. But, in spite of the likelihood of pro-abortion advocates preferring to consider themselves as being "pro-chance," friendly neighborhood support staff to those women forced through an abortion by uncaring fate, the term is and should be "pro-choice."

And THAT is my soapbox for the day.