I was going to write a post about the truly horrible argumentation techniques on display at Echidne of the Snakes' site. Now, Dana must have read my mind, because he wrote about the completely phony-baloney argument techniques of Amanda Marcotte.
While I'm anxious to comment on the ridiculous post by Amanda, I'll start with the Echidne post first.
The post "American Life League and Poverty" isn't terrible in and of itself. It's more of the typical "abortion is the only cure for poverty" argument you see a lot on liberal blogs (particularly feminist ones). One terrible argumentation technique used by the left is to find a fringe organization and then plaster all persons with a belief as being just like that.
American Life League believes in no abortions. None. Not for health, life, incest, rape, or any of the other sorts of hard exceptions most Americans agree with. Naturally, Echidne (and Jill at feministe) take the extreme position of American Life League and plaster all pro-life supporters with it. I'm a little surprised there wasn't a reference to wanting to bomb abortion clinics. After all, Echidne claims "the extreme fringe of the Republican party does offer more legitimization to misogyny".
What interested me about the post today wasn't so much the post itself. It's more of the usual yadda yadda yadda pro-lifers-want-to-kill-women meme that's quite prevalent on the left. No, what interested me was the comments to this post.
A few excerpts:
--In the past, the people (so, so family orientated) who advocated these policies made sure that women were locked up, hidden away and deprived of their children for getting pregnant.
--If a woman choose (sic) to have sex, then chooses an abortion for whichever reasons she so chooses, that’s OK by me. Nor do I pretend that abortion is something other than it is – a choice to end a pregnancy and possible future life.
--Anything that interferes with a woman's right to choose should be as illegal as it is immoral.
But the comments got uglier quickly. What I noticed is that pro-abortion supporters end up with three arguments, two of which are based on the idea that if one is pro-life, one is a hypocrite.
1. You can't be pro-life and for the death penalty.
And
2. You can't be pro-life unless you want to adopt every child waiting for adoption.
Both arguments were on display at Echidne's site.
--you seem to be implying that you're "pro-life". Does this mean you're against the death penalty and against the invasion if Iraq? Or are you a hypocrite?
--If anti-choicer's walked their talk, there should be zero children awaiting adoption because they would have been snapped up immediately if not sooner by the anti-choice zealots. Until every child is wanted and loved and not in languishing in poverty, the anti-choicer's glib slogans ring hollow.
--People like you give Christians a bad name. When I tell people I'm a Christian I have to specify that I'm not one of the fake ones like you. I was just stating facts. It's not name-calling when it's the truth.
You get that? If you are pro-life but support the death penalty, you are a hypocrite, and if you don't adopt every available child, you can't be pro-life. Occasionally, I link to this site which discusses logical fallacies, most of which are plainly on display during any "debate" (I use the term loosely) with liberals.
In the above quoted examples, we have argumentum ad hominem, dicto simpliciter, red herring, slippery slope, and straw man on display. The arguments spun out of control after some poor guy asked what an "economic hardship" was. Having read enough feminist blogs, I can assure you that an "economic hardship" is whatever the woman decides it is at the time she wants to get her abortion.
The third argument used by pro-abortion supporters is the long, involved, agonizing hypothetical.
--If the choice of abortion is not up to the woman and her physician, sansort, then whe gets to say? If I find out I'm pregnant tomorrow, to whom do I need to go make my justifications? What level of risk is adequate for me to be allowed to not have a third child? Is a 10% chance of death sufficient, or does it have to be 30%? How about if I just go blind? Is needing to sell our house and move to an apartment, sufficient? Or is that just convenience? Does it make a difference that we'd have to move out of the only school district that gives adequate PT and OT to our youngest, or is he just screwed?
--What is your opinion in the recent case of a 9 year old child, just starting the onset of puberty (not that rare now), who was raped by her abusive father and made pregnant?
What about women who are even now being forced to work on the streets and kept obedient with a forced drug addiction? Can you say that they "chose" to have sex? Shouldn't they have the choice to abort rather than possibly suffer a painful and traumatic miscarriage due to drug-induced complications or a particularly aggressive beating? Or giving birth to a child that would be addicted to drugs and possibly suffering, from birth, from any number of serious STDs?
How about this- I live with my partner. We have been together for almost 5 years and intend to spend our lives together. Due to personal issues which both of us have suffered we do not, ever, want to have children. Not ever. We use contraception, obviously, and are very careful. My partner has asked doctors for a vasectomy but, because he's only 25, they won't operate. Neither will they let me tie my tubes. If I get pregnant, why shouldn't I have the right to have an abortion? I don't want to have one, I would never want to be faced with that choice. But I should have the right to, since I apparently don't have the right to end my own fertility. Oh, and we're on minimum wage, in massive debt and regularly go 2-3 days without eating in the run-up to payday. So yes, poverty DOES still exist in the Western world. We couldn't afford childcare, nor could we afford for one of us to quit work to care for a child.
The reason people like to make up hypotheticals is that they are virtually impossible to answer because the person asked is at the disadvantage of not having all the information necessary to make a decision. In the examples given above, for instance, the commenter unreasonably assumes that all things are static and that the birth of a child wouldn't be added incentive to do better for oneself. Nor does it acknowledge the fact that no one will remain the same age forever, or that the people involved have already determined that pregnancy is an acceptable risk (they choose to have sex, after all).
If I were still allowed to comment (I am, after all, banned), I would ask these same people at what point a woman's right to choose gives way to the child's (or fetus', if you will) right to life? After all, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court explained that there is, indeed, a point when potential life takes priority over convenience. I wouldn't expect these hard-liners to answer. Their belief is that the right to abort one's offspring is absolute; there's never a time in their way of thinking where the child is more significant than an appendix (and, yes, I've seen this argument before).
At least I don't accuse them of lying about their own motivations as does Amanda Marcotte.
As I’ve mentioned a gazillion times before, the main obstacle with debating a lot of conservatives is that most conservatives rely on so many bad faith arguments. So you’re not really arguing about ideology, but end up mostly trying to get them to admit to come out and argue their actual position. To make it even more complex, while the conservative talking points that get passed around are created in bad faith, they do tend to get their hooks into people who are too dumb or scared to look deeper and find out that their own opinions that have been handed to them by conservative media have been created in bad faith.
That’s the central issue in the “but some anti-choicers really do think they care about babies!” non-starter of a debate. Yes, some people in non-leadership roles have convinced themselves of their own bullshit, but that doesn’t obligate anyone to play along with it. In fact, as many people here and on other feminist boards will tell you, they used to be “pro-life”, and the only way they started to shift their opinions was to have someone call out the anti-woman, anti-sex agenda of the anti-choice movement until they had to admit that they were participating in a bad faith movement.
As I pointed out at CSPT, Amanda not only argues that conservatives don't mean what they argue (but have "pernicious motives" for opposing something), but that they are too stupid to know that they don't mean it and need liberals to point out their racist, sexist, homophobic motivations. Naturally, this line of bullshit was well received at Pandagon, where conservatives are constantly accused of hatred towards (pick your group) and stupidity in what they believe.
What the examples from Echidne's commenters and Amanda's post show is how weak the arguments of our liberal friends are. But don't expect that to stop them. But what's a little petitio principii between "friends"?
UPDATE: More of that "nuance" and "understanding" the left are so well known for from the Echidne comments:
i think the only way to argue with the "abortion = murder" position in such a way as to not go insane, is to respond: "i know you don't really believe that - you just think that women don't know what's best for them and should be controlled by men." because that IS what every "abortion = murder" person i have ever talked to believes. then again, i have no idea how to argue that point with those people either.
Because, once again, the "abortion at all costs" crowd knows all pro-life supporters think women should be controlled by men. Golden! You can't make this stuff up.
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