Saturday, December 20, 2008

Argument by Exception

In a more expansive post, Robert Stacy McCain points out how argument by exception has become the strongest tool in the liberal arsenal.

Furthermore, academia seems to be teaching young people to argue by exceptions, to naysay any general observation by responding, "Yeah, but what if . . .?" The "what if" is always some hypothetical case intended to disprove the general observation. You see this all the time in the abortion debate.

The overwhelming majority of abortions are merely retroactive contraception to terminate an adult woman's inconvenient pregnancy. Yet pro-choicers are always conjuring up the specter of the 14-year-old incest victim, or the woman whose pregnancy presents potentially fatal medical complications. One might allow for every such exceptional case and still prohibit 97 percent of abortions -- reducing the annual number of U.S. abortions from more than a million to less than 50,000 -- but in the mind of pro-choicers the existence of a relatively few exceptional cases justifies unlimited abortion.

Often, in my debates with pro-choicers, I am accused of being anti-contraception, anti-woman (indeed, frequently assumed to not be a woman), heartless, stupid and against any possible exceptions for abortion. This isn't the case; I think contraception is a good thing if you don't want children, and even though I personally wouldn't have an abortion for rape or incest (perhaps not even the life-threatening pregnancy), I could allow those exceptions if it meant barring the 97% of abortions done for other reasons.

But this never seems to be enough for the hardliners. Because if you point out where you might agree with them--on contraception, for instance--they will simply keep moving the goalposts. What about the morning after pill? What about babies born to abused women? What about all those babies already born but living in orphanages?

This linguistic trap is often used when discussing crisis pregnancy centers. As I pointed out in a previous post, for the radicals, it isn't enough that an organization offer ultrasound, pregnancy information, baby supplies and even names, addresses, and phone numbers of churches and people willing to help pregnant women. If the organization isn't discussing abortion and birth control, it's only purpose is to "trick" women into having their babies.

Such arguments are only persuasive to the naive and those already prone to believe them. Fortunately, there aren't too many of those around.