单选题
Advice to would-be culture warriors in the 21st
century: walk softly and carry a big thesaurus-a dictionary of classified
synonyms. According to the conventional wisdom, the culture wars are over in
Washington-or, at the very least, reduced to minor disputes. Buoyed by the
support of centrist, socially conservative Christians, the Obama administration
has ushered in a new era of conciliation. Ideological opponents-especially those
on either side of the abortion issue-are now trying to establish common ground.
A first order of business is "abortion reduction," a seemingly non-controversial
and praiseworthy goal. By agreeing that abortion is a complex moral issue and
that it should be less frequent, former enemies can work together to find ways
to reduce abortions. Beneath all the optimism though, tensions
continue to boil, and it can seem that differences between the old culture wars
and the new ones are merely differences in tone and tactics, not in ideology. In
previous eras, warriors fought with rhetorical arguments; now they use new
semantic weapons so sharp they could split a hair. On both sides, people say
they want abortion reduction. But listen carefully to how they say it. On the
left, the so-called common ground advocates talk about reducing the need for
abortion, while on the right, folks talk about reducing the number of abortions.
The way you talk about your desire for common ground, it turns out, signals
whose side you're actually on. The left wants to reduce demand for abortion; the
right wants to reduce supply. Inside the Beltway, these
seemingly invisible semantic differences have big policy implications, for the
inevitable question arises: how do folks intend to reduce abortions? Two bills
currently in Congress point to the deep, ideological differences that continue
to linger. The Pregnant Women Support Act, favored mostly by pro-life groups,
provides financial support especially for poor and younger mothers who want to
carry their pregnancies to term. The Prevention First Act, favored mostly by
pro-choice groups, funds contraception (the practice of preventing a woman from
becoming pregnant when she has sex) and comprehensive sex education especially
to poor and younger women. The conversation about
"abortion reduction" then, is not really about abortion but about other
hot-button issues: birth control, premarital sex, teen sex and sex
education. Outside the Beltway, who really cares? According to
an ABC News/Washington Post poll from August 2008, 54 percent of Americans
support legal abortion in all or most cases-exactly the same percentage as a
decade ago. It's hard to imagine anyone arguing with the basic premise: in an
ideal world, fewer American women would seek abortions. How our government
achieves that end matters; how activists talk about achieving it matters not at
all.
单选题
From the first paragraph, we can learn that
A. abortion reduction is approached in a different way.
B. culture wars are over in the new era of conciliation.
C. former enemies cooperate to address a technical issue.
D. abortion controversies are less frequent than before.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】推理判断题。第一段提到曾经敌对的双方正尝试建立共同点，共同找到减少堕胎的方法，也就是说他们采取了不同以往的处理方式，故选A项。文中说the Culture wars are over in Washington，后面接着说the Obama administration has ushered in a new era of conciliation可见B项把两句话混为一句话了，且由后文得知，新调解时代下的文化战争并未结束，故B项表述与原文不符；该段末句提到堕胎是一个moral issue，故C项中的technical issue“技术性问题”错误；文章中的less frequent指的是堕胎率，并非对堕胎争议，此外文章没有对现在和以前在堕胎争议的激烈程度进行对比，故D项不符。
单选题
The first sentence in paragraph 2 denotes that
A. it's the way of expression that has not changed during culture
wars.
B. the difference between the old culture wars and the new ones is
ambiguous.
C. both the new culture wars and the old ones share the same essence.
D. the new cultural wars are breaking the grounds of the old ones.