The modern society constantly faces moral dilemmas that require ethical and legislative solutions. It is vital to develop clear terms of the discussion so that the audience is not manipulated by the logical fallacies, which are not easy to trace. This paper aims at revealing such logical mistakes in a piece of writing, “Abortion is America's Silent Holocaust” by Kevin Palmer.
Commonly, a fallacy is viewed as an unclear or simply false statement, which is used in communication to persuade the audience and prove a controversial statement. The abovementioned article reveals the author’s negative view on abortion in the USA. He accuses women of being tricked by Planned Parenthood and wishes their attitude towards abortion would change. Talking about such a controversial issue, the author uses some logical fallacies to convince an inexperienced reader.
The first one, called false analogy, can be found at the very beginning of his text. Kevin Palmer compares termination of pregnancy with the Holocaust. After giving this statement a second thought, it becomes obvious that genocide stands for execution of conscious and rational human beings, while a fetus is yet to become a person, and this creates a significant difference between these issues.
The second fallacy that can be clearly viewed is the appeal to ignorance. The author states that by legalizing abortions, the US government emphasized the country’s uniqueness. Nevertheless, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, there are 61 countries that have no restrictions on abortions at all (2013). Therefore, the author bases his argument on a piece of false information counting on his readers’ unwillingness to search for more data.
The last major fallacy is the appeal to emotions. The author constantly uses the word “child” instead of an emotionally neutral “infant” or “embryo”. By equalizing the notions of a child and a fetus, Kevin Palmer triggers readers’ emotions thus making his writing more persuasive.
To conclude, appealing to different fallacies has created some means of manipulation. At first, the article seems to be rather rational as the author refers to historical and statistical facts as well as common knowledge. However, after medical research topics analyzing this piece of writing, it becomes apparent that the real arguments were rather emotional and won the hearts of readers by manipulating them.
