My Goodness!

That's what Ralph Neas says he said to his director of public communications after he perused John Roberts' resume after his nomination was announced. Then he discovered that Roberts was a integral part of the Reagan destruction of all our rights and the Constitution. Aren't we glad Neas is out there protecting us? [How many votes did he get in 2004? -ed.]

Before that, he'd never heard of the guy? Neas speaks as if he were so reasonable and mainstream that nobody could disagree with him. He's kind of like Pat Robertson that way. His rhetoric is aggressive, assuming facts not proven, such as that "mainstream" thinking agrees totally with PFAW. Note also how the innovations in constitutional interpretations of the past 75 years are included as part of our founding document, but any return to earlier interpretations would be "judicial activism," taking away our God-given rights, etc., and that anyone who thinks Roe v. Wade was a bad decision is a "dangerous radical."

The first lesson of sophistry is to be the one to characterize the positions in the debate by claiming the high ground. Claiming that your opponent is trying to undo progress is one way of doing this. Another is to use loaded phrases or loading empty phrases with the way you use them. "Reproduction rights" is such a phrase. Seen by itself, one would assume it refers to the right to reproduce, i.e. to have children. But as used by Neas and his ilk, it means the right of a pregnant woman to abort her fetus without any grounds whatsoever. This right must be accepted because women become pregnant through no fault of their own, and are victimized by the fact that they, but not men, are the ones who are inconvenienced by unwanted pregnancies, or so it is implied.

It is true that men have long been able to impregnate many women and then move on because it was difficult to identify them or because the pregancy itself was somehow shameful to the mother but not to the father. However, societies continue themselves through natural reproduction, and therefore have a vested interest in their birthrates. It would seem to me that the society has an interest not only in the birth of new citizens, but also their being raised under optimal conditions.