Abortion: America’s Modern-Day Slavery Issue

A pro-life activist holds a sign outside the U.S. Supreme Court during the 48th annual March for Life in Washington on Jan. 29, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Commentary

If there’s a stain that has remained on America’s proverbial white linen, it’s the stain of slavery. A country founded on the principle that “all men are created equal” struggled mightily to live up to that standard until it did as Abraham Lincoln stated, where “every drop of blood drawn with the lash [was] paid by another drawn with the sword.”

Americans tolerated a cruel method of economic prosperity and based much of their reasoning on the idea that those of a different color were not capable of mastering their own lives, but should rather be mastered. The evolution of thought on slavery trespassed from “a necessary evil” to “a positive good.” Slaves were considered a people less than human, or at least a people of whom human dignity was surely of no consequence. Americans, Southerners in particular, convinced themselves that the liberty-expounding words of our founding document were a “self-evident lie” and all that was required was for everyone to ignore the self-evident truth.

We look back on those 88 years of extended slavery and think of the lack of human dignity that slave owners and slavery-sympathizers―white, black, and otherwise―heaped upon themselves. We consider the abolitionists’ literature, the preachers’ protestations, the obvious look of downtroddenness on the slaves’ faces, and the outright logical fallacies that a human with every single aspect of humanity about them were not worthy of their own humanity. And we look on it with shame, but with a thankfulness that we finally ended it, and we did so honorably by sacrificing ourselves on the altar of freedom and to secure those words that “all men are created equal.”

Slavery and Abortion as Social Norms

It has now been 49 years since Roe v Wade was decided, which made abortion Constitutionally protected. More than 60 million babies have been aborted, and Americans continue to excuse the decision to annihilate what amounts to a generation of Americans. We’re again fighting an evil that America has accepted as a social norm.

Abortionists and abortion-sympathizers echo the same logical fallacies that refuted freedom and stained the American landscape for nearly a century. Abortion has been argued as a human right, despite the fact it kills a human. It echoes the fallacy that all men are equal, except those men.

Soul Crushing Depravity

Abortion is touted as human progress, rather than human depravity.

Indeed, we’ve become depraved creatures who seek pleasure constantly and work to avoid pain altogether, unless that pain might masochistically cause us pleasure. Our sexual cravings are encouraged from childhood so that we grow up unwilling to save our sexuality for any special occasion, much less a special person, and are just as unwilling to accept responsibility for any consequence that may arise from those cravings.

Young Americans are told by entertainers, social influencers, politicians, educators, and corporatists that the act of abortion is truly inconsequential. But the truth is, we’re crushing the souls of millions of young people across this nation, and with that goes the soul of the nation.

Adopted Arguments from Slavery

Those who denounce the idea that guilt accommodates the ending of an unborn life preach the same sermon that was used to preserve slavery. The conscience should be free to fend off shame. But just as slavery dehumanized the slave, abortion dehumanizes the unborn child. And just as abortion destroys the child, it can also destroy the mother.

The argument of rape and incest is used as a backstop when the aberrant claims of a “woman’s right to choose” or “reproductive rights” don’t serve their purpose. But is our society so backward and vile that tens of millions of crimes have been perpetrated upon women to which the only recourse is abortion? Nay. Our backwardness and vileness doesn’t revolve around these two perverse crimes, which result in approximately 1 percent of our annual abortions. Rather it’s the other 99 percent of abortions submitted to out of fear of parenthood, familial embarrassment, intimidation by the father or family member, personal inconvenience, fear of lost opportunities, cosmetic reasons, or the oft-used excuse of an unplanned pregnancy, as if pregnancy were an unwarranted result of sex.

The defense of abortion, however, gravitates to an even darker claim that echoes our past. The claim of the unborn’s inhumanity. Those who worked to preserve slavery relied on the argument that their slaves were not fully human and therefore should be considered property, like an animal or inanimate object.

The legislative and judicial systems have worked hard to support this claim, just as they did for slavery. Some states have gone so far as to not prohibit abortion at any time in the pregnancy. This heartless dismissiveness is reminiscent of that displayed by the slave master.

Vicious Economics

Slavery grossly evinced dominance of one race over another, but logic suggests it was done for economic reasons. But who benefited economically from slavery? Indeed, it was a small portion of the population who exponentially profited. And profit seems to drive America’s great modern sin.

Abortion clinics, in particular Planned Parenthood, perform hundreds of thousands of abortions annually, accounting for a multi-billion-dollar industry. Ironically, Planned Parenthood makes a vast portion of its profits within minority-centric areas. The pharmaceutical industry also benefits from abortions. The development of vaccines is highly contingent on cells from the unborn, which in turn have recorded incalculable profits for those in the industry.

Shall We Avert Our Eyes Also?

Averting our eyes to the grotesque killing of unborn millions is reminiscent of the slavery-sympathizers and those who chose to ignore slavery. An air of flippancy has reigned in America for decades and has only grown to a wider expanse, as school children in many states are indoctrinated to believe that abortion is science; no, rather it’s medicine for the sick, and once administered the patient is made well. We have an incoming generation―I dare say it’s already here―who will live under the guise that abortion is not “a necessary evil,” but “a positive good.”

Yet we no longer avert our eyes to the photographs of the slave’s warped and maligned back. We no longer avert our gaze from the metal shackles around their wrists, ankles, and neck. We write books. We make movies. We create art depicting and denouncing slavery in the strongest possible terms. Perhaps it is because it’s easy to do now that the problem has long been solved, though there are those putrid individuals who attempt to shame the ones who fought, bled, and died to end it. The irony is that many of those individuals promote and protect our modern evil.

We do, however, avert our eyes when shown photographs of lumps of flesh and body parts assembled in disarray. We avert our ears to avoid the horrific mental images, because our modern sin is far too repulsive. We do not write books. We do not make movies. We do not create art depicting our modern abhorrent humanity. We do not do it, because it’s hard. Too hard and too now.

There are many in this nation who have discovered their heroism through cowardice. They stand in pretended solidarity with those who were held in bondage centuries ago, as if the dead care now. But ask those same people to stem the tide of blood flowing from America’s abortion clinics and they will curse you for the request.

They will rely on the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision for their standard of morality, as if the same court never issued the Dred Scott decision. The American justice system has proven that it can’t be our moral compass―nor is it its job to be.

So as we near a half-century of ongoing and increasingly brutal abortions, I repeat the words of Lincoln: “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge … may speedily pass away. … With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.