Authenticity and Prevalence of Third Camps in the Abortion Debate

Abstract

Gestation is the calendar of pregnancy. Some abortion debaters keep one foot in pro-choice and the other in pro-life camp, depending on gestation. Their literature is often subjectively labeled pro-life or pro-choice. However, they trade off gestations pro-choice for gestations pro-life. Therefore, labeling a body of literature as this third camp is objective. If other trade-offs besides those calendar-based are sparse, then the objective labeling of a percentage of a body of literature as third camp implies the objective labeling of the remaining percentage as authentic pro-life or authentic pro-choice, because Pr(camp|labeled camp) = 1 - Pr(third camp|labeled camp). This study applied the method to Web samples. The data support the hypothesis that specific gestations are mentioned or implied in this literature more frequently than can be explained by a debate for which every gestation yields as many timeline keywords as one would expect without third camp.

Keywords

abortion content analysis mislabeling news media Web literature

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