Another perfect example of the motte-and-bailey fallacy: Abortion

I previously wrote about the motte-and-bailey fallacy, and how feminism, particularly 10+ years ago, was rife with it. And one of the most perfect examples is: If you criticize feminism and its excesses and abuses, the standard reply (particularly back then) was: "So you don't support women's rights?"

In other words, with an accepting audience "feminism" has a huge amount of tenets, dogmas, ideologies, agendas and goals, many of them rather destructive ones (ie. the "bailey"), but when criticized feminists would retreat to the "motte" with "oh, so you don't support women's rights? Feminism is just about women's rights and nothing else."

Here's another perfect example: Abortion.

The modern western world has been by far and large socially engineered and brainwashed into supporting abortion no matter what, no matter the circumstances. Heck, a lot of people think it's "a basic human right", believe it or not. And a lot of them, particularly nowadays, support it up to birth, and sometimes even after birth.

While not all, a considerable amount of people, however, immediately retreat to the "motte" when abortion is criticized and considered a crime against human life. The same type of archetypal "motte" responses are always given: "So if a 12-year-old is raped, she should be forced to keep the baby?"

It's the perfect example. When the audience is accepting, support all abortion up to birth, no matter what, no matter the circumstances. But when challenged, retreat to the "what about rape victims?" motte.

It happens so often that it's an outright cliché by this point.