A lesson in rhetoric

Before I start writing, let me ask you all a question: Grindhouse - great movie or greatest movie? Best film ever created by humans.

Today I listened to a talk sponsored by the Pro-Life medical student club in order to get a free lunch from Eegee's. As a result, I feel so dirty that I don't think I'll ever get clean. I don't like making this blog political, but sometimes...you just...and...(Montgomery makes a throttling motion)...you know?

It was a talk put on by an Ann Coulter-esque woman from Arizona Right for Life. Without exaggeration, it was the worst presentation I've ever seen. It was a verbal abortion. This isn't because I disagree with her. Oh no, it was much worse than that - she was bipartisan bad.

I don't care if you're on the side that believes abortion to be a necessary, albeit unpleasant, medical procedure or if you're an ignorant hillbilly, she had no idea what she was doing. It was one long train of logical fallcies, biased samples, out-of-context statements and emotional appeals. It was like watching a hyena try to convince a bunch of monkeys that eating bananas is wrong.

Here are some highlights:

• She began her speech by saying that the following things aren't pro-life: slavery, the holocaust, eugenics and the murder of Matthew Shepherd. In the process, she implied that Pro-choicers agree with all those things. Sigh. (By the way, all of those things have been done by people on your end of the political spectrum. Just FYI.)
• She said that we don't discriminate based on age. When I asked about voting/drinking/smoking/driving/renting cars, she stopped taking questions.
• She kept saying things like "we all agree that a fertilized egg is a human." Um...I never agreed to that.
• She compared the murder of a three month old child to a first trimester abortion. When we called her on how ridiculous it was, she just kept acting like there was absolutely no difference between the two and we moved on to...
• "A fetus is dependent on the mother, but so is a baby because if mom throws it in the pool it will drown. It's dependent on the mother." I don't even know where to begin on this one...
• She repeatedly used out-of-context statements and isolated incidents of pro-choicers saying things against abortion to support her argument.
• "Abortions can be dangerous, so abortions are wrong." She neglected to mention that pregnancy is more dangerous than having an abortion.
• "300 doctors said that this specific kind of abortion is useless and no more safe than other kinds, so all abortions are wrong." Nice argument. And wow, did you get a whole 300 doctors to say that? Of the millions out there, you got that many? Nice...
• She randomly inserted a slide saying that Planned Parenthood distributed an unsafe "sexy" patch. After repeatedly asking for clarification, we learned that it was a contraceptive patch. She's against contraceptives now?? Where the hell did that come from?
• She showed a picture of an elephant fetus and said "this is an elephant" then a picture of a human fetus and said, "so this must be a human." Makes a lot of sense.
• She had a slide saying that a fetus has metabolism, grows, and differentiates so it must be alive. She skipped that one quickly, probably because she knew that med students would tear it apart. Teratoma much?
• She wouldn't take questions or comments, probably because we were calling her on her bullshit.

Basically, it was a stream of non sequitors, red herrings, proof by example, generalizations, half-truths, ignoratio elenchi, ad hoc, ad hominem, ad logicum, ad ignorantium, post hoc ergo propter hoc, com hoc ergo propter hoc, cum laude, ipso facto, nolo contendere, habeas corpus...whoa, starting to get a little dizzy. Where am I?

I'm more than happy to listen to both sides of the argument*, but try actually using facts and real logic. Not logical fallacies disguised as truth. Sometimes it was just straight up lies. Like I said - it was the worst speech I have ever heard. I think somebody did a D&C on her brain.

The worst part: she said she used to teach debate. I think I can guess why she doesn't have that job anymore. It takes about two seconds to tear any of her arguments apart. She probably trained a whole generation of idiots.

I've heard a lot of well constructed arguments against abortion, and this was not one of them.

Get that shit out of my school.


Sorry for ranting. Needed to vent.

* not really