Rhetoric of Abortion

DISCLAIMER: I am not writing this post to debate the actual issue of abortion, I simply aim to discuss the rhetoric surrounding it.

I'll start with a bit of background information.  I am a very strong supporter of Planned Parenthood; not because of anything regarding their abortions, but because of everything else they do.  If you are unaware, they provide basic health care such as birth control, STD screenings, and cancer screenings, among many other things to men and women who may otherwise not be able to afford such things.  It has recently come under attack by republicans who want to cut all federal funding to it.  This seriously upsets me, because no federal funding goes to pay for abortions for women, and they provide so many other services.  Anyway, I have been trying to keep up with this issue, and have been receiving emails from Planned Parenthood. 

Yesterday I got an email urging me to go to a rally, call my congress member, etc.  This email would have gone unnoticed aside from the fact that it was littered with the term "anti-choice." 

The terms originally used to describe the two sides of the argument were "pro-choice" for people who thought abortions should remain legal, and "pro-life" for those who wanted it to be illegal.  I personally don't find either of those two terms offensive towards either side.  I have a cousin who is extremely religious, and extremely pro-life, who constantly posts things on Facebook regarding abortion.  I've taken the time to look at some of the websites, and every one that I saw talked about the people that are "pro-abortion."  Granted most of these websites were fairly extreme, but I was shocked that they would use that term, to say the least.  I'm pretty positive that there is no one out there that is pro-abortion.  It's not that pro-choice people want women to have abortions, just that they should be able to make that decision for themselves, as the title implies.  The term "pro-abortion" completely skews the ideals that pro-choicers fight for.  So up until yesterday, I had never seen any of these behaviors from the pro-choice side, and I must say, I was thoroughly disgusted when I did.  Just as "pro-abortion" tries to make pro-life sound bad, "anti-choice" makes it sound like they are trying to take away our freedom.  

I don't care how strongly people feel about a subject; stooping to name calling is never the solution.  Both sides have legitimate arguments that can be made, so there is no reason for them to do this.  Both sides seem petty and immature.  It may work to further persuade people that are already on their side, but I cannot imagine it helps them get any moderate people to agree with them.

April Fool's Day!

Happy April Fool's Day, everyone!  While scrounging my brain for something to write about this week, I thought about this lovely "holiday" that is April Fool's Day.  I've found that people either take it very seriously, or don't even realize what day it is.  Then I started thinking about the rhetoric of pretty much everything for the day.  I was looking around at news websites such as Time.com and cnn.com, and found myself wondering if all of the articles were true, despite the fact that these are very reputable news sources. 
I found myself judging whether or not they were real by the language used and the content of the articles.  I didn’t actually end up finding any joke articles, probably because I was on all credible news sources.  But earlier in class I overheard two girls discussing the latest edition of the Phollegian, the Penn State joke newspaper, and was thinking about how we decide whether or not something is true.  The Phollegian is an extreme example because the topics they write about are extremely outlandish, and obviously not true.  Despite this, the articles are still written professionally and in the same fashion as a legitimate newspaper.  So if you wanted to write a joke article and make it convincing, the key would be to write it in the same format.
I also overheard a lunch lady telling a couple of girls that the commons ran out of grilled cheese, which was also just a joke.  Pulling something like that off in person is much more difficult than writing it because it requires you to control more than just your choice of words.  Aside from just having a convincing story, you have to control your body language, facial expressions, and vocal tones.  This is often difficult to do because you may not even realize that you’re doing something that’s giving away your lie.
Moral of the story; if you want to play a prank on someone, make everything seem as normal as possible for as long as possible.