life matters journal - Fall 2012
photo by Vectorpal on flickr, some rights reserved
of choice. Congressman Drayton of South Carolina, in 1828, said, “...we would as soon permit others to invade the sanctuary of our dwellings as to touch slavery, We would as soon permit Congress to dictate to us a code of morals.” The most prevalent justification of the pro-slavers position in the mid-19th century was that slavery as an institution was good for the Black race. Not unlike the arguments of abortion supporters, who genuinely care about potential problems of child abuse, poverty, and the mental health of the child in the womb, antiabolitionists genuinely believed emancipation was “inconsistent with the best interests of slaves” (1834 Synod, Southern Clergy). Indeed, it was argued by sociologists of the time that since a higher proportion of Blacks in the free states were certified insane than in the slave states, then slavery must somehow be beneficial to mental health.
from Virginia. In his Christian Doctrine on Slavery, he wrote that Christians should stay out of the slavery question, “because it requires the Church to obtrude herself into the province of the state.” Abolitionists, like anti-abortion people, were accused of being “impracticable,” “simple,” “absolutists,” who didn’t understand the complexities of this “necessary evil.” Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was considered to be a northern elitist, ignorant of the realities of plantation life. In addition, like abortion, they claimed that, legal or illegal, “slavery will always exist.” Many humanitarians and politicians held a kind of pro-choice position on slavery. Abraham Lincoln, in his early political career, claimed that, while he himself would never own a slave, he wasn’t sure he could pass judgment on those who did. Chief Justice Taney himself, who ruled against Dred Scott, strongly opposed slavery and regularly attended Mass and confession with Black people. One of the more striking resemblances between abortion and slavery is the claim to privacy and freedom 21
Another altruistic claim is the benefits to society. The 4,000 abortions per day in the United States, it is argued, keep down the welfare rolls and control population. Likewise, emancipation was seen as “an evil” that would “let loose a population nearly twelve times as numerous” as the slave states’ existing population. Educational costs, unemployment, and crime, it was argued, would take a suicidal toll on the south. Sojourner Truth, the spiritual Black abolitionist leader, challenges us in her “And Ain’t I a Woman?” speech to see the interconnectedness of the rights of all “sub-human” persons. When the rights of one group in society are threatened-- Blacks, the unborn, women, Jews--then all our rights are threatened. Perhaps it is too soon to make heroes out of the fanatical purists in the pro-life arena. But Michael Harrington, the Democratic Socialist leader, angered a 1979 Planned Parenthood assembly when he said that the anti-abortion movement was “one of the few genuine social movements of the 1970s.”