Logical Fallacies and the politics of abortion

At the last presidential debate, Donald Trump said the following:

Well I think it is terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month you can take baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that is okay and Hillary can say that that is okay, but it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she is saying and based on where she’s going and where she’s been, you can take baby and rip the baby out of the womb. In the ninth month. On the final day. And that’s not acceptable.

To which Hillary Clinton responded:

Well that is not what happens in these cases. And using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-2016-presidential-debate-230063#ixzz4O80WdPjl 

Mrs. Clinton employed the red herring fallacy of redirection – and she was very successful at it too, because the next day all of these articles and columns about abortion in the ninth month started popping up in social media.

First this one on Medium.com by Cecily Kellogg.  Her point was  – “ Listen, you fucking idiot. What you described literally never happens.”

and then she goes on to describe her own story where indeed, it literally happened.

Gen Gunter wrote that there is no such thing as “9-month abortions.”

But that’s not really Mr. Trump’s point.   He said that according to Hillary, you CAN take the baby out of the womb in the 9th month right up to the last day.  Mrs. Clinton didn’t deny it. In her rebuttal she said his rhetoric was a scare tactic, but she didn’t deny that she believes there is a constitutional right to have an abortion through out and including the end of pregnancy. She didn’t deny it, because she believes it. Here are two examples.

So whether abortions happen in the ninth month, or on the last day of pregnancy wasn’t really the point. The point is that Hillary Clinton believes that an unborn baby does not have the constitutional right to life under the law, and she supports  laws that make that possible.

Here’s an article from the Huffington Post that even gives examples of why a late term abortion would be done, which refutes the articles that say it is never done.

Donald Trump clearly, precisely and accurately stated Hillary’s view on abortions throughout pregnancy- and that’s probably why all the fuss.

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