Struggling with Cliches?
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Many people believe that much of the talk about a woman's right to control her body and an unborn child's right to life is made up of cliches and slogans. Perhaps none of these slogans can stand up without important qualifications and a lot of argument.

This does not mean that the slogans are worthless. Aside from their political value, they provide us with an orientation or a direction in which to move. The problem is that they do not offer the nuts and bolts of a reasoned position.

We can use slogans as a starting point, but then we need to dig deeper and think precisely about what we mean by a certain "right," why we believe in it, and how to answer critics. If we avoid the digging, we allow the slogans to do our thinking for us. In a famous essay, George Orwell once warned that if we give ourselves to the jargon of any political group, we are abandoning the intellectual process itself. Jargon gives the illusion of deep understanding and thoughtful answers where there are none.

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