Keenan Answer

A little way down the page is one version of how I think the Keenan question should be answered. Your answer didn't have to be the same as mine in every detail, but it did need to contain certain things:

1. A more-or-less accurate statement of Nancy Keenan's thesis.

2. Individual descriptions of all or most of Keenan's supporting points, each in a separate and coherent paragraph.

Stuff that contributes to a clear, precise, accurate and complete account of Keenan's actual argument earns you points. Stuff that doesn't tell me anything about what Keenan says does not earn points.

I have followed my go at the Keenan paper with additional comments that I think could be made about her press release, but which are not strictly necessary for passing this assignment. They are all basically things that you could have said which would have been acceptable comments if you had said them after covering Keenan's main points and specific arguments. I'm including them strictly as examples of things you could also have said about the Keenan article.

My Answer

Here is one way that the Keenan question could have been answered. It's not a model answer, as it's a bit more elaborate and nit-picky than the answers I'm generally expecting from students. Rather, this is supposed to contain as much as possible of things that would have been good to see in your answers.

  Nancy Keenan's thesis is that the Mitt Romney presidential ticket would be bad for American women. She says that a Romney presidency would result in serious damage to a woman's right to obtain an abortion. This thesis is mainly based on the fact that Romney choose Paul Ryan as his running mate and, according to Keenan, Paul Ryan's record indicates that he is very, very pro-life (she says he has an "extreme anti-choice record"), which indicates that a Romney-Ryan presidency would be very likely to severely restrict women's reproductive rights. Keenan also says that she is not surprised that Romney chose someone like Ryan as his running mate, and that both Ryan and Romney are out of touch with America's values and priorities. She says that the Romney-Ryan ticket presents a danger to women's health, by which she presumably means reproductive health. Keenan does not make any reference to Ryan's personal views or public statements. She just talks about his legislative voting record.
   Keenan supports her thesis by citing Ryan's legislative record on abortion and contraceptive rights, by tying Ryan to Romney by virtue of Romney choosing Ryan as his running mate, and by reference to Romney's own positions on this issue.
   Keenan says that Ryan voted on 59 bills in congress that concerned reproductive rights. All of those votes were pro-life. None were pro-choice.
  Keenan says that Ryan voted several times to eliminate funding for family-planning programs.
  Keenan says that Ryan also voted for a measure that she calls the "Let women Die Bill." (This is her name for it. Presumably it's sponsors called it something else when they introduced it into Congress.) She says that this measure would make it legal for a hospital to refuse to provide an abortion to a woman who wanted one, even if that abortion would be necessary to save that woman's life.
   Keenan says that Ryan has repeatedly voted to prevent women in the US military from being able to use their own money to obtain abortions from military hospitals. (She didn't say that American servicewomen had ever had this right. She just said that Ryan wouldn't let them have it. From her use of the word "deny," I infer that some people tried several times to change the law so U.S. servicewomen would be given this right, and that Paul Ryan was one of the legislators who said "no.")
   Keenan says that Ryan has many times voted to remove funding from Planned Parenthood. She says that defunding Planned Parenthood would cut millions of women off from access to a certain set of services, which she refers to as "comprehensive reproductive-health care and preventative services." I believe that this means that Planned Parenthood provides all or almost all the services that could be required by a woman who was pregnant or planning to become pregnant. Presumably, this would include care for pregnancies as well as medically supervised access to contraceptives and abortions.
Keenan also says that Ryan cosponsored and repeatedly voted for a "Federal Abortion Ban," a law that she says would 1. criminalize some abortion services, 2. endanger women's health, and 3. carry a two year sentence for doctors. She doesn't say how the bill endangers women's health, and she doesn't say which doctors would get the two-year prison sentence, although I presume it would be doctors who performed abortions.
Keenan finally says that Ryan voted for an appropriations bill that would have defunded Planned Parenthood, eliminated Title X family-planning and reinstated an abortion ban in the District of Columbia.
After giving her list of Ryan's legislative actions, Keenan goes on to discuss her view of a Romney presidency. She begins by claiming that the U.S. President has more power over what she calls "reproductive rights" than anyone else. Presumably she means this term to include the right not to reproduce. She then says that the American political system a lot of different ways to influence law and policy governing "freedom of choice," again presumably meaning abortion and contraceptive rights.    In her view, that power can be used to support or oppose reproductive rights, depending upon which person holds the presidency.
   Keenan's next claim ties Ryan's voting record to the expected actions of a Romney presidency. She claims that Romney's decision to take Ryan as his running mate is a reminder of the importance of elections to individuals' ability to make their own medical decisions. Again, I presume that she is talking about decisions regarding contraception and abortion. Keenan claims that the 2012 presidential election might determine whether or not abortion is legal and accessible for American women in the next generation. She emphasizes this by saying that Romney has "pledged" that "taking away women's rights" will be one of his priorities, and that him choosing Ryan emphasizes that "promise" to the hard-line pro-life people that Keenan says are among the backers of the Romney-Ryan ticket. Given that she is head of the National Abortion Rights Action League, it seems clear to me that Keenan meant "women's reproductive rights" or "abortion rights," when she said "women's rights." It's not clear whether Keenan thinks Romney has signed a formal document with the word "pledge" at the top of the page, or whether she just means that Romney has said things during his presidential campaign that would lead a reasonable person to conclude that he is in some way committed to reducing or ending abortion rights in America. Given that the second interpretation is still a reasonable interpretation of Keenan's words, I take her to be saying that Romney has made campaign speeches and other comments that indicate a hostility to abortion, and an intention to pursue some forms of anti-abortion legislation.
   Keenan ends her press release by stating that her organization wants very much for Obama to stay president.

Your answer doesn't have to be as long as mine. My answer includes everything I could think of to say, and is a little longer I expect from students. You just have to get Keenan's main point, her argument, and all her supporting evidence with reasonable completeness and accuracy. Everything you did towards this end counted for you. Everything you did that did not serve this end counted against you.

Other Comments on Keenan's Arguments:

The following types of comments were definitely not required to pass this assignment. They're just what I think as slightly more elaborate exposition of exactly what Keena is saying and not saying.

   Keenan's focus in this article is what Romney's selection of Paul Ryan means for a potential future Romney Presidency. Her thesis is that Romney's choice of Ryan is bad news for those who seek to preserve and expand abortion rights in America. She supports this claim about Paul Ryan by giving a series of facts about Ryan's record as a legislator. (She does not cover his public statements, which are non-binding, but his voting record which more conveys his actual intentions and has the potential to actually change the laws of the land.) This is connected to Romney by the idea that when a presidential candidate chooses a running mate, his choice says something about his overall legislative agenda. Typically, choice of a running mate indicates to potential voters that the running mate's political agenda will be somewhat served if the ticket wins the presidency. Given this commonly known feature of American politics, if Nancy Keenan can show that Paul Ryan is hostile to abortion rights, she will have shown that a Romney-Ryan presidency can also be reasonably expected to be hostile to abortion rights. Since Ryan's record shows several votes (attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, allowing hospitals to let women die rather than provide an abortion, a federal abortion ban) that are extremely hostile to abortion rights, Keenan's argument seems extremely plausible to me.
   In order to show that Keenan was lying someone would have to do more than simply show that some of her claims were not true, you would have to show that she either knew that they were not true when she said them, or that there is no way she could have reasonably thought that they were true when she said them. Since this is a press release, we have a right to expect that Keenan did appropriate fact-checking before it was released. If we have proof that no fact-checking was done, that would be pretty much as bad as saying stuff that she knew was not true. From this it follows that if Keenan made multiple gross errors of fact, then we could reasonably say she was lying. If, however, she made no factual errors, or made only one or two minor errors, we would be wrong to say that she was lying.
   For instance, if it turned out that Ryan had voted pro-choice more than a few times, that would mean Keenan lied about that. If he only voted pro-choice once, or the number of reproductive rights bills he voted on was 58 or 60, Keenan would be a little wrong but not lying. If Ryan had never voted to eliminate funding for family-planning programs, that would make Keenan a liar. If it turns out that Ryan had not voted for the bill some people call the "Let women Die Bill," or that the bill in question (whatever it's official name is) doesn't allow hospitals to refuse to perform abortions, or does allow them to refuse to perform abortions but makes an exception for abortions that are necessary to save a woman's life, then Keenan would have lied about this. If there had never been any bills to allow U.S. service women to get abortions at military hospitals, or if there had and Ryan had not voted against them, then Keenan would be lying here. Similarly, if Ryan had not voted to defund Planned Parenthood, or had not voted for a federal abortion ban, Keenan would be lying about that. Again, I think that being found to be grossly wrong about Ryan's voting record would prove Keenan to be lying because the content of congressional bills and congressional voting records are relatively easy to check, and if you're going to say something negative about something, you should damn well get your facts straight. This cuts both ways, of course. If proper research reveals that everything that Keenan said is true, then she could not possibly be said to be lying, and anyone who said she was would be making a false accusation
.

If you see anything in my answer that you don't think is in Keenan's paper, or anything else you disagree with as an answer to the assignment, please mention this in the FaceBook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/159191010899751/ and we will discuss it there.

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