How NOT to Argue

Today at college some anti-abortion group was handing out blatant propaganda. For those unfamiliar with me, I, too, am very anti-abortion. I believe that abortion should be illegal unless the mother's life is somehow in danger. That being said, this was some of the worst, most mindless drivel I have ever seen in my life. The brochure they handed out makes me ashamed to be pro-life. It shoots straight off the slope of failure, flies over the so-bad-it's-good bump of epic fail, and plummets into the abyss of total failure.  It really is that bad. There are at least five major problems I have with it:

1) Race Card:
A good portion of the brochure was focused solely on African Americans Blacks and how damaging abortion is to them.  They even go so far as to call abortion "Reproductive Racism."  Sorry, but you're preaching to the wrong choir.  My college is primarily White and Hispanic/Latino.  Get your target audience right, and then we'll talk.  Also, are Blacks the only ones who get abortion?  No, I didn't think so.
Crying racism is also now seen as the fastest way to forfeit any pretense of wanting a legitimate debate.  It exposes the crier as unthinking and not caring of what the other person has to say.  Speaking of crying...

2) Crying the villain to death:
Once you get past the racial focus, you get to find out that most of the brochure is all about mourning for the loss of so many lives.  Look, just because it sounds good to you, doesn't mean that it will change anybody's minds.  Cry all you want, but the people convinced that they're not lives are suddenly going to change their minds.  You need real argumentation, not tears.  Crying like that only works in children's TV, which is not a good source on how to debate.

3) Name-calling.
Like with crying, name-calling is another highly ineffective technique learned from children's TV.  Do I really need to explain how bad this is to do in a debate?  Well apparently I do, considering that both sides on the abortion debate (and many others) consist almost entirely of glorified name-calling, also known as labeling.  You hear this all the time.  No matter where you stand, you have to admit that terms like "Tea-Baggers" for the Tea Party, "Bush-Bashers" for people who even once dared to criticize Bush, "Birthers" for people who want to see Obama's real birth certificate, and other terms are all hateful and contribute nothing to the discussion except for dividing the two sides and making them hate each other even more, as opposed to civilly disagreeing and calmly explaining their differences.

4) Religiosity.
All over the brochure are Bible verses.  To people vaguely Christian, this is awesome, because what could be more powerful than the word of God Himself?  To non-Christians, the answer is just about anything.  How about instead the word of what they believe to be a fictional construct made solely to control the mindless masses (at least, this is what the atheist trolls on Yahoo Answers believe), you use the word of scientists?  I'm thinking of somebody along the lines of Jérôme Lejeune, the scientist who discovered that Trisomy 21 was the cause of Down Syndrome.

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down syndrome. Dr. LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee, “after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.” He stated that this “is no longer a matter of taste or opinion,” and “not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.” He added, “Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception (http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Mar/8/scientists-attest-life-beginning-conception/).“

While you're at it, why not include the story of Dr. Bernard Nathanson.  Back in the 60's, before abortion was declared legal in Roe v Wade, he was a co-founder of NARAL, a major pro-choice activism organization that exists to this day.  After abortion was legalized in 1973, he was one of the first to start performing abortions, and considers himself to be personally responsible for over 75,000 abortions.  Later, after seeing an abortion in progress through the power of ultrasound imaging, he experienced a complete turnaround in his views, becoming a major pro-life activist and personally directing a well-known documentary called The Silent Scream.  Complete turnarounds in core beliefs like what happened to Dr. Nathanson don't just happen.

5) Evading the cornerstone.
At least in my opinion, the entirety of the abortion debate can be boiled down to one key issue:  Is the unborn fetus human life or not?  In the entire brochure, there's only a small section on proving this,  not even an entire page.  You'd think something like this would, you know, be the entire focus of the entire thing.  Anyway, all it says is the SLED argument, which is not perfect.  That's it.  It doesn't even try in anything else, other than showing pictures.  That's not how to do it!
The entire debate revolves around whether or not the unborn fetus is human life.  If it is human life, then it is to be treated as a homicide.  If it isn't human life, then there should be no restrictions at all.  Both sides tend to avoid this issue, with pro-lifers arguing that abortion is murder (without proving that the unborn fetus is life to begin with), and pro-choicers arguing that women should have the right to choose to do with their body what they wish (again, without proving that the unborn fetus is in fact part of the mother's body).
If you actually want to change people's minds, you need to change this core view.  This should be the focus.  Other things, while useful on their own, are not going to change any minds.  Focus on the core issue, then go after the rest.

Also, 100% of abortions are performed on people whose parents chose not to abort them, proving that abortion is all about rebellion against parents.