Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards begins today's email alert this way:
"Birth control. It's used by 98 percent of American women. It's healthy, safe, and effective. It reduces the number of abortions. It's basic health care."
There's some fuzzy math going on here. If 98 percent of women use birth control, then why do we have 1.3 million abortions every year? If these numbers are correct, then it's pretty clear that birth control is not very effective at preventing pregnancy. But then again, maybe those numbers are skewed by people getting their condoms at Planned Parenthood. Some of their condoms have been rated as the poorest by Consumer Reports.
98 percent is probably not the real number of women currently using contraception. This is another example of how abortion advocates use wild numbers and make wild claims-like the 10,000 women dying a year from illegal abortion before Roe, or that abortion is safer than child birth-to make their case.
The opposite of failing to recognizing complexity in ethical reasoning is to recognize it but intentionally isolate a simple particular from among many relevant particulars. That's the basic rhetorical device Planned Parenthood seems to have used here. Statistics are so easily thrown out on the table that it's difficult to interpret the meaning of any statement that includes them without seeing the rest of the statistics. Beyond that, it's even important to not only see the statistics but to also understand the system those statistics are said to pertain to. Have you ever noticed that generally only the largest or smallest numbers are used when statistics are needed?
ReplyDeleteAs insidiously evil as I consider Planned Parenthood to be, I think we should avoid giving them too much credit. They're probably not the fully-informed yet diabolical people they're often said to be. In my opinion, they're more likely constrained to believe and do what they do because of a sort of moral or ethical bondage to ideas and persons they're not prepared to transcend.
BAP,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments and post. As always, good observations.
I think if I were them I would focus on the little particulars too. They have to do something like that because there's no where to go. The whole abortion argument for them seems to come down to this... abortion could hurt me and little kids could wreck my life.
That's a good sign for our side. If that's all that they can argue, then it's not long until the whole thing collapses in on itself like one of those old casinos on the LV strip.
I've been told by people who have come out of the abortion clinic/abortion movement that advocacy is many times an attempt to justify their own abortions, or to calm doubts. That is, if they can get closer to it and more immersed in it and maybe get more people involved in it then the feelings will go away or get drowned out.
The organization of Planned Parenthood, as it currently exists, and the movement it dominates seem to me to rely upon information control. That's a basic rhetorical orientation that organizations of all kinds tend to adopt, including pro-life organizations. There's nothing morally wrong with rhetoric in the sense of oratory or convincing presentation, but the truth, goodness, and beauty of any position on any issue transcends the mere ability to convince others.
ReplyDeleteThe problem for Planned Parenthood is that the rhetorical machinery seems to dominate the individuals within the movement. If you're right that many who escape the pro-choice movement have acknowledged that they were actually only seeking justification by consensus, then the opponent of pro-life organizations is actually so much more destructive in that it not only seeks the destruction of the unborn but also consumes pro-choice activists as resources, even intimidating them by guilt into giving themselves willingly.
In that light, the recent recognition by pro-life authors of the ideological oppression taking place in the pro-choice movement underscores the crucial aspect of self-understanding involved in life issues.