Think about how the authors use facts and reason in their arguments. Identify the inartistic proofs (facts, statistics, expert testimonies, witnesses, examples), their interpretations, and the conclusions drawn from them. Identify the artistic proofs (appeals to reason, appeals to common sense). Has the writer used logical structures such as degree, analogy, or precedent to support the argument? How are all of these methods used to support the argument? Which are most effective in supporting the argument? Might one type of evidence be more effective in convincing a particular audience?

Illustrate:

Read the article below and illustrate a paragraph or two explaining the author's use of facts and reasoning to support the argument.

Texas Says a Fetus Is a Child, Except When a Parent Sues a Negligent Doctor or State Official slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/texas-fetus-abortion-malpractice-ken-paxton.html Jurisprudence Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks to reporters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on April 26, 2022. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images Prison guard Salia Issa was seven months pregnant when she reported to work on a warm mid-November evening in 2021 at the Middleton Transfer Facility in Abilene, Texas. Issa had just started her night shift when she felt intense, contraction-like pains. She needed to get to a hospital right away. But, consistent with prison policy, supervising officers wouldn't let her leave her post for hours, until someone came to replace her. By the time Issa was allowed to drive herself to the emergency room, her baby had died. Doctors believe that had she made it sooner, the child would have been born alive. Issa and her husband sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and three senior officers there for violating their federal civil rights. 2/3 The Texas prison agency is represented by the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, who disputes one critical fact. As Paxton tells it, Issa may have suffered an injury, but it was to her bodyto her pregnancy. Apparently, Issa's injury is limited to her uterus. Never mind the death of the child whose arrival she and her husband had been eagerly awaiting. Or that Issa gave birth to her baby no differently than if her child were alive. Standard medical care encourages parents who deliver a dead baby to spend time with and hold the baby, take pictures, and make footprints and other memories. We don't know whether Issa and her husband were able to spend time with their baby. But we do know that standard of care doesn't include bonding like this for the loss of a colon, kidney, appendix, or even a uterus. This isn't the only context in which Texas has devalued the unborn child. If a doctor's misconduct is to blame for fetal death, Texas malpractice law specifically defines the fetus as far less: as just part of the woman's body and explicitly not as an individual. Ironically, in the current abortion pill litigation, plaintiff Shaun Jester, a Texas OB-GYN, claims that abortion denies him the joy of getting to "bring about a successful delivery of new life." But if Dr. Jester were to negligently prevent that "successful delivery," the legal injury is limited to the woman's uterusthereby capping any damages to a maximum $250,000. Dr. Jester specifically benefits from the devaluation. Texas' framing of the harm of pregnancy loss in terms of a body part is especially perplexing in light of its abortion ban that declares an "unborn child" exists as of fertilization. But Texas isn't alone in treating the very same unborn life in strikingly inconsistent ways across different contexts; the contradictions actually pervade the legal landscape. For example, Florida bans abortion at six weeks to protect the unborn. But Florida law denies parents any basis to sue for the death of their unborn child. Wrongfully causing a pregnancy loss in Florida is merely a legal injury to "living tissue of the body." Indiana, Kentucky, Arizona, and Idaho criminalize abortion from the moment of conception to protect prenatal life. But these states deny grieving parents any cause of action for the wrongful death of their unborn child until the point of fetal viability at around 24 weeks. Mississippi, too, makes abortion a crime from conception, while also denying a legal claim for pregnancy loss until "quickening," as early as 16 weeks. Ohio bans abortion at six weeks, but denies grieving parents a claim for the death of their unborn child until viability. Things get even stranger when the embryos people created using in vitro fertilization are contaminated or destroyed. When fertility freezers failed at two clinics in the summer of 2018, some victims sued for the wrongful death of their unborn child, leaving courts to decide between malfunction and murder. The laws in Arkansas illustrate the tension. Its abortion ban says there's an "unborn child" at "the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum," which would also seem to include frozen embryos in a lab. Yet the state law denies relief for lost embryos as life if the death is before the embryo is transferred to the woman's body. Similarly, ever since the first-ever IVF suit in Rhode Island, courts have treated people's lost embryos as "irreplaceable property." 3/3 An embryo or fetus is specifically an "unborn child" under public law that criminalizes abortion based on the state's interest in the unborn. But they're reduced to body parts or property under the private law of civil wrongs, or torts, when it comes to the interests of parents who grieve their mismanaged pregnancies or mishandled embryos. How can the state's abstract interest in that life start so much earlier, and be so much stronger, than the interest that aspiring parents have in their very own unborn child? Popular in News & Politics For decades, the abortion debate has crowded out real talk about injuries like Salia Issa's in Texas. For decades, the abortion rights movement has avoided this talk for fear that admitting that pregnancy loss matters risks ceding ground on abortion rights. It doesn't. Recognizing the grief of reproductive loss is a function of how each person relates to their unborn, which can and often does vary across people and circumstances. That individualized assessment is exactly how tort law considers other personal injuries. This way of thinking about the value of the unborn poses no threat of collapsing into personhood-at-conception for those who seek abortions. Issa felt her baby kick. She and her husband made all kinds of plans for the child in their life together. The state of Texas did not. Yet its interest is treated as mattering more than theirs. Had Issa ended her pregnancy, Paxton would prosecute the doctor who provided that service to her into prison for killing a baby. But because it wasn't an abortion, according to Texas, it wasn't a child, even if that's how Issa valued him. The state's interest in nascent life shouldn't count for more than that of an expectant parent. Taking reproductive loss seriously points to ways of protecting the unborn that don't involve forcing pregnancy or childbirth: Support those who want to have their child. Expand access to prenatal care. Accommodate pregnant people at work. At the very least, if they have a miscarriage or their baby is stillborn, don't devalue their loss; it can't be a "baby" for the state but a "body part" for the parent.