Pro-X: A Historical Approach to the Philosophical Problems of the Life/Choice Binary in American Abortion Discourse
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Date
2019-09-18
Authors
Pickard, Claire
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
I employ history to ground, to reveal, and to understand the logical, metaethical, and otherwise explicitly philosophical problems of the pro-life/pro-choice binary system in American abortion discourse, a binary I refer to as “pro-x.” The first three chapters of my dissertation are a history of abortion in the United States, moving from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day. What historical analysis reveals is not just the contingency of the ways of understanding abortion that we often uncritically adopt today. It also shows how those contingencies shape the present discourse, including the pro-x logic that is so often taken for granted as a necessity for “the abortion debate.”
I first argue that “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are both terms with co-constitutive meanings, which is not readily apparent in common use of the terms and which lends itself to rampant fallacies of composition and equivocation. I argue that these complicated, multiplicitous, and very often ambiguous meanings of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” make them unsuitable for use in political or moral conversation, even if they were divorced from a binary structure, which I do not take for granted as a possibility.
My second main argument is that the structure itself, which assumes two opposing pro-x stances as representing the “sides” of the abortion debate leads to an inability to weigh metaethical nuance outside of the binary pro-x labels. My third main argument is that much of abortion discourse, especially inside the pro-x system relies on what I call “equivocal standards,” terms that are a critical part of a metric to determine the morality of an action, but which are broadly used in a fallaciously equivocated manner, whether intentional or unintentional. The use of equivocal standards form a condition for the possibility of a pro-x binary and are one of the central causes of the binary’s failure as a useful tool for public discourse. Equivocal standards also open the possibility for future action to deconstruct the pro-x binary through public recognition of the fallacious arguments that form the foundation for a pro-x logic.
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Keywords
Abortion, Genealogy, History, Reproductive Rights