Pro-Child / Pro-Choice An Exercise in Doublethink by...

In her essay â€Å"Pro-Child / Pro-Choice: An Exercise in Doublethink?† Judith A. Boss deconstructs the argument supporting legalized abortion on the basis that it is beneficial to children in general. Boss presents the oft-used slogan of the pro-choice position, â€Å"Pro-Child / Pro-Choice†. She maintains that this slogan seems closely related to â€Å"newspeak†, which she characterizes as â€Å"†¦vocabulary pared down to a minimum so that whole ideologies are expressed in a single slogan†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (156-7). The term â€Å"newspeak† comes from George Orwell’s 1984. In the novel, these simplistic slogans serve to perpetuate â€Å"doublethink†, which entails, as Orwell writes, â€Å"holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them† (156).†¦show more content†¦To believe that murdering an unborn child on circumstantial grounds and to believe in the modern court proces s is an obvious form of doublethink. However, the pro-choice position has a quick rebuttal to this question by claiming that the aborted fetus is not a person or a child so â€Å"they cannot be benefited or harmed† in the first place (157). In other words, the unborn fetus is not included in definition for child in the slogan: â€Å"Pro-Child / Pro-Choice†. Seeing that this rebuttal would quickly lead to an argument concerning what constitutes personhood, Boss moves on to examine the benefits abortion-on-demand gives to the second category, the born child. Boss points out that specific research on the well being of born children since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 is sparse. This lack of empirical research leads one to believe that the pro-choice claim that abortion-on-demand benefits children seems to be a speculative and unsubstantiated. Boss notes a rapid decline in the social well-being of children since 1974. Since abortion-on-demand obviously does not benefit the unborn fetus, it must aid the well-being of the born child in order to be beneficial to children at all. Boss argues that ensuring abortion-on-demand is in no way beneficial to the child, and in fact, may be harmful. Boss uses the rise in teen suicide