There are these phrases I keep thinking about, things that should mean what they are but end up being ways of silencing people by narrowing the frame of an argument.

Everybody knows that……

We can all agree that……

It’s just common sense that……

One of my favorite political thinkers was Antonio Gramsci who came up with the theory of cultural hegemony. A shorthand explanation for it is that what is considered “common sense” is actually only common sense to the oppressing class but those ideas spread to everyone and serve to keep the oppressed quiet- you wouldn’t want to look like some fool with no common sense by questioning something that is so well known. Really obvious examples are trickle down economics, raising the minimum wage reduces the number of jobs, outlawing abortions reduces the number of abortions.

It’s that last one that has been making it’s way around the internets since the Guttmacher study came out showing that making abortion illegal does not change the number of abortions sought, it just changes the safety of the abortions performed. Several big boys of the blogosphere have cried fowl because it doesn’t conform with their idea of common sense. Why would women risk their life, health and freedom to have an abortion in a place where it’s illegal? It does not compute for them. But then again, they have never been pregnant or even feared being pregnant themselves, so they cannot understand that the desire to not be pregnant is strong enough to outweigh the risks.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of being told that my reality isn’t based on common sense. My Cartesian common sense calls shenanigans on anyone who uses those phrases to frame an argument. In the Guttmacher study, it is pretty obvious that they did a gold standard investigation to deduce actual numbers instead of trying to gather numbers that conform with perception.