Many of the same people who–in retrospect–decry the evils of slavery, are willing– in the present–to justify the deeply disturbing procedures associated with abortion and dismemberment.
While virtually everyone agrees that slavery is inhumane, degrading and morally wrong, throughout much of history scores of people vehemently defended it, advancing arguments in efforts to justify the barbaric practice of enslaving fellow human beings. While none of these arguments would be acceptable in today’s pseudo “politically correct” climate, at various times in our history many people accepted these arguments as entirely reasonable.
I often wonder how future generations will judge us in light of our own prevailing prejudices and cultural customs?
Fifty million abortions have been performed in the United States since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision ruled 7-2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.
This ruling was not without limitations, however; “this right must be balanced against the state’s interests in regulating abortions: protecting women’s health and protecting the potentiality of human life.” While these interests were not viewed as significant in the early stages of a pregnancy, they became more compelling in the later stages of a pregnancy.
Recent New York legislation strips away this “protection.” The so-called “Reproductive Health Act” glaringly removes this safeguard for human life and–to assuage conscience– removes abortion from the state’s criminal code. It also expands abortion past 24 weeks through birth, declaring abortion a “fundamental right.” In essence prohibiting all limitations, which Roe vs. Wade did not do.
Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), who signed the extreme measure into law, declared those “who are right-to-life have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
Wow! What a declaration!
Cuomo encouraged other states to follow their lead.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Virginia’s Governor, Ralph Northam, was asked whether he supported a Virginia legislator’s statement that legislation proposed by Virginia’s Democrats would permit abortion for a woman in labor. His affirmative response fueled a firestorm across the country demanding he resign his position.
Northam was specifically talking about delivering a fully formed infant alive and then asking the mother whether the infant should live or not.
After Northam made his initial comments, Senator Ben Sasse (R-NB) blistered him, snapping, “This is morally repugnant. In just a few years, pro-abortion zealots went from ‘safe, legal, and rare’ to ‘keep the newborns comfortable while the doctor debates infanticide.’ I don’t care what party you’re from–if you can’t say that it’s wrong to leave babies to die after birth, get the hell out of public office.”
Mercifully, a Virginia House subcommittee voted down Virginia’s late-term abortion proposal.
The Equal Justice Initiative suggests, “The effort to reduce American slavery to a benign, romantic institution is a deeply rooted tradition. After the Civil War, Southern whites used power reacquired through violence and discrimination to construct a false narrative about slavery.”
As South African theologian and Nobel Prize-winner Desmond Tutu confessed, “As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.”
Just read the history of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, drafted by Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Democratic president Franklin Pierce (an act that eventually led to the creation of the Republican Party). The bill, passed by the Democratic controlled 33rd U.S. Congress, created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad.
Missouri Democratic Senator David Atchison announced that he would support the Nebraska proposal only if slavery was allowed. Atchison took the position that he would rather see Nebraska “sink in hell” before he would allow it to be overrun by “free soilers!” (A short-lived political party whose main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the Western territories, arguing, “free men on free soil constituted a morally and economically superior system to slavery.”)
As wise King Solomon discerned, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)
There continues this diabolical pretense, which we hold out to the world in our efforts to conceal our own depravity. I would like to define these as “futile efforts” but, sadly, as we are witnessing, these efforts continue to dissuade the misguided.
Those who defended slavery rose to the challenge set forth by those who opposed slavery (abolitionists). The defenders of slavery threw economics, history, religion, legality, social good, and even humanitarianism at the opposition, in order to further their arguments. Many slaveholders accepted that African-Americans were biologically inferior to their masters. During the 1800s, this argument was taken quite seriously, even in scientific circles.
Defenders of slavery would turn to the courts, who had ruled, with the Dred Scott Decision, that all blacks–not just slaves–had no legal standing as “persons” in our courts. They were termed “property,” and the Constitution protected slaveholders’ rights to their property.
When a society forms around any established practice, as the South did around slavery, it will formulate a set of arguments to support it. The Southerners held ever firmer to their arguments as the political tensions in the country drew us ever closer to the Civil War.
Proponents of slavery argued that, even if slavery is cruel and degrading, slaves are not fully human and so their suffering is ethically unimportant. As such, they do not have any rights that would justify the abolition of slavery.
As slavery was generally accepted by the majority in some societies–ethics simply became a matter of public opinion (Ethical Relativism: the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one’s culture). In other words, slavery was ethically acceptable in those societies where it was the cultural norm.
Oh, how we indulge in eviscerating past “cultural norms” in our self-righteous hindsight, and yet, defend present “cultural norms” as the basis for defining our “morality.”
Human Rights lawyer Diya Uberoi and former medical anthropologist Maria de Bruyn, noted in a document titled, “Human rights versus legal control over women’s reproductive self-determination,” published in June of 2013: “In addition to the lack of social and legal consensus regarding definitions of human beings and personhood, such laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of opinion and non-discrimination because their proponents seek to impose their personal beliefs on others through legal measures.”
What a sad state of affairs when a society willingly makes the immoral or unconscionable “legal” on the grounds that, not to do so, would violate their right to “freedom of opinion.” Such a society is ethically flawed and in need of spiritual rebirth.
(Injured Humanity- Part 3, final installment will appear in the February 16th issue)
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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