Guns and abortion have been neuralgic issues in American politics for a long time now, and the divisions are pretty familiar. They are so familiar that we don’t often think about the extent to which these two bitter debates are really the same debate, just with the sides reversed.
Both the NRA and NARAL deploy the rhetoric of individualism and libertarianism. They say they want to keep the government from restricting your freedom. Their opponents, on the other hand, think of themselves as fighting to protect innocent life. In their most heated moments, gun controllers and anti-abortionists describe the other side as bloodthirsty. They also contest its ownership of individualist rhetoric, since all they want is for the government to protect individuals from the threat of lethal violence.
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