Biology and Bodily Autonomy

Last month, one of my friends posted an image of this Instagram conversation on her Facebook account:

No Straw Men Here

The point of the post is clear – you don’t get to call a child an abomination just because of the manner of his or her conception. However, a man named Sam responded by writing the following:

This is a straw man. Just because some people are rude does not mean you get to take away women’s choices

Sam on Facebook

Sam had clearly seen people use the phrase “straw man” in arguments before, but doesn’t understand what it means. The Straw Man Fallacy is when an argument is misrepresented or weakened in an attempt to make it more easily refuted. However, that’s not happening here… In the image, thewhistestguy called unborn children conceived in incest/rape an “abomination of nature”. The user albany_rose pointed out that, if he’s willing to apply this slur to the unborn, he’s implicitly applying this slur to those who are born.

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