Climate Change, Evolution, and Now Abortion: Why Conservatives Mislead About Facts
Sure, anti-choicers still lean on the “pro-life” angle in internal messaging to supporters and while harassing women outside of clinics. But when it comes to making change happen on a legislative or judicial level, the anti-choice movement is borrowing a plan of action from climate change denialists and creationists: Create the illusion of a scientific controversy where none exists, and use that as a pretext to push a right-wing agenda. Climate change denialists have had great success claiming there’s a scientific dispute over whether global warming is real, when in fact there’s overwhelming consensus that it is happening. Creationists have also successfully confused the public about research regarding evolutionary biology, which is so ridiculous at this point it’s like saying that there’s debate over whether gravity is real.
Now, anti-choicers seem to be favoring this strategy over old-school declarations that embryos have a right to life, which supersedes a woman’s right to her own body. The idea is to create the illusion—in other words, flagrantly lie—that there is a serious medical debate over the dangers of abortion to a woman’s physical and mental well-being, and use that to argue that a bunch of laws making it harder to obtain abortions are necessary.
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