[snip for brevity]


I thought the same thing the minute I read that, but I think I'm starting to get a reputation around here as an argumentative idgit, so I thought I'd see what others said.
Now that you've spoken and are in agreement with what I feel, I'll add a bit to what you've said:


Pieces like that are utter hogwash. Why? Because I can write a piece like that about ANYTHING. I can easilly sit down and scrawl out some claptrap about the poor baby who's mom decided to follow the "religious right" and not have an abortion. Now the baby's a crackhead who's molested by her uncle and beaten by her mom, and so on.

In short, these "heart strings" arguments are not arguments at all. They are not designed to get people to think about what is best; they are designed to get people to cry. Especially in American society, negative emotions are something to be avoided (remember the last time you were depressed and everyone kept telling you to "cheer up," as though not being happy all the time is a bad thing?), so people who feel sad about this will fight against abortion, not because they have been informed of the facts, but just the opposite, because they are horridly uninformed.

It's pretty obvious that pieces like this are not overburdened with facts. An embryo cannot love it's mother. It doesn't know who it's mother is. It doesn't have a functioning brain, so it doesn't know ANYTHING. If a grouping of embryonic cells can love it's mother, then a grouping of fingernail cells can love you equally, so stop biting them. In fact, when writing MY tearjerker, I can go one better than this paper and include factual accounts, such as the mother who didn't want her kid anymore, and solved the problem by popping the baby in the microwave. Coroners estimates put time of death at around 5 minutes after the microwave was turned on.

One of the first things we learned in my logic class was what arguments NOT to use in a legitimate debate. Emotional appeals were at the top of the list.