One approach to the abortion issue that is very common is the appeal to hypocrisy, a type of ad hominem fallacy. This is from the podcast of Kevin deLaplante, Chair of the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Iowa State University. He discusses the fallacy:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GM5yEOPKUw"]YouTube- Fallacies: Appeal to Hypocrisy
And since some people are stuck on the generic fallacy, you can also check out his critical thinking tutorial website here:
http://www.criticalthinkingtutorials.com/
In the context of abortion it looks something like this:
"People who call themselves pro-life are not pro-life! They are anti abortion! They are not fighting for children all across the world! They support capital punishment, love war, and don't care about the thousands of women who would die if we outlawed abortion. If they really wanted to save lives these people would send money to Haitian orphans and not try to fight inexorable abortions!"
Some time back I came across this on another political forum. The individual with whom I was speaking went on to cite a study which he claimed showed that legality has no effect on whether or not a woman decides to obtain an abortion. Then he made the "wire hanger," appeal. Prior to Roe v. Wade ten thousand women died every year in botched abortion attempts made by amateur, back alley butchers, he wrote.
In regards to the apparent hypocrisy of pro-lifers, I agree. The term pro-life is Orwellian. But this is irrelevant to the issue. After having rediscovered my dialogue with this individual, I went and did some research. Where did he get his statistics? Ten thousand women every year?
According to fact checker, "The figure comes from a 1936 study by Dr. Frederick Taussig who estimated that abortion claimed the lives of 5,000 to 10,000 women a year."
Now, Dr. Taussig himself admitted that the number was hazy. But his estimate was plausible in that time period. Women did not have ready access to contraceptives or medical attention. Penicillin was not widely available until 1945 and the first oral contraceptive was twelve years slower. Nevertheless, when these things did come out the study was rendered instantly obsolete.
In 1969 Tietze, a leading authority on abortion trends, wrote:
"Some 30 years ago it was judged that such deaths (from illegal abortion) might number 5,000 to 10,000 per year, but this rate even if it was approximately correct at the time, cannot be anywhere near the true rate now."
Tietze claimed that the actual abortion-related mortality count was in the hundreds but not the thousands, and his number was buttressed by Stanley Henshaw, an abortion statistic expert at the Guttmacher Institute.
I have heard it argued that the reduced mortality rates were due to the liberalization of abortion laws but this is simply false. To cite fact checker again, "From the 1940s through the 1960s...evidence shows a dramatic decline in abortion-related deaths occurring even [b]before[/b] the first states liberalized abortion laws in 1967." The journal for the American Medical Association quotes official estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics showing an 89 percent decrease in abortion related deaths by 1966.
Why do we still cite this stone age statistic? Well, NARAL's cofounder Bernard Nathanson claimed that the prochoice movement intentionally proliferated a known falsehood for the sake of their own political agenda. In his expose "Aborting America," he wrote:
"I confess that I knew the figures were totally false...and the others did too...but in the morality of our revolution it was a useful figure."
But what were the real numbers like prior to Roe v. Wade? According to the Center for Disease Control, there were 88 abortion related deaths in 1972 but less than forty were caused by illegal abortions.
So what about back alley butchers? Fortunately,, they are another myth proliferated for political gain. Alfred Kinsey estimated in the 1950s that around 85 percent of illegal abortions were performed by trained, professional physicians in cleanly environments. In 1960 Mary Calderon, former director of Planned Parenthood, wrote:
"...90 percent of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians. Call them what you will, abortionists or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such; and many of them are in good standing in their communities. They must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is...abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous."
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Former Abortion Counselor Opposes Abortion Bansby Armyofash25231 views
Well, I am not the best at collating thoughts and verbalizing them in an apropos order. So, maybe you are right and this does not tie together very well. But, that certainly does not make my argument any less academic or valid. On the other hand, can you tell me in what ways, specifically, this is reminiscent of propaganda? Are any of my facts incorrect or ill supported? If so, which ones? Is any of my reasoning misleading? If so, at what point?-
WarThemedRevolution 1 year ago
You can hardly call this academic, it does hang together and sounds more like propaganda.
elegantlywasted1000 1 year ago
@elegantlywasted1000 The only reason I can find for you saying that this sounds like propaganda and is not academic is simply that you do not want to believe what I have to say is true. Or, rather, that you have already decided that it is untrue and are not open minded to an argument suggesting otherwise. Kind of like, for example, how Republicans call any study demonstrating global warming propaganda. They have already decided global warming does not exist, so any evidence to the contrary-
WarThemedRevolution 1 year ago
@elegantlywasted1000 They call propaganda. Now maybe I am wrong and this is not what you are doing, and that is why I am asking for more specific criticisms. On a related note, did you view the second half of this video?
WarThemedRevolution 1 year ago