The Right to Abort

Abortion, like slavery, is the ultimate form of oppression

A draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico on Monday. Such a leak clearly suggests political motivations and a presumed intent to intimidate. That aside, what really bothers me about this ordeal is the response to the revelation of the draft from the pro-abortion side. This reaction and the general attitude toward abortion and the unborn has always been jarring to me. I am not sure I can ever get used to seeing people scream and cry and fight with everything they have to cling to a right to kill their own children. It is still shocking every time I see it. How could people be so cruel and dismissive of human life? How could people be so obsessed with the prospect of ending the life of an unborn child that they are willing to do anything to protect their ability to legally do it? It is baffling.

I understand the begrudgingly pro-choice position - the position that acknowledges the difficult decisions that often surround abortion, the physical and psychological impacts, the special circumstances, etc, and believing that you shouldn’t make that choice for someone else. I get that. I strongly disagree with it. But I understand it. However, I do not understand the enthusiastic, fanatical abortion supporter. I do not understand the activists, the zealots, the people who herald abortion as a cathartic, religious experience. I do not understand the people who will go to war and do everything in their power to protect it. The mantra “safe and rare” no longer exists for these people, which means they never actually believed it in the first place. Abortion is the single most important issue to them and they seem to believe that if the federal government steps away from the issue, that their world will somehow come crashing down. Why?

At least those who are begrudgingly pro-choice have retained their humanity. It is not unlike those who were begrudgingly pro-slavery. It wasn’t that they loved slavery or that they necessarily agreed with it. They just believed that allowing the government to abolish it would cause a lot more problems. Lincoln, himself, voiced these concerns. Their reasoning was obviously flawed, but the position was at least somewhat reasonable. Contrast that with those who loved slavery, celebrated it, proclaimed it to be a fundamental right, and did everything in their power to protect the institution, even to the point of civil war.

We find ourselves in a very similar situation. One side is fighting for the rights of human beings who cannot fight for themselves. In response, the other side insists that their own rights are being violated. The result is war.

There is no attempt to even partially understand the pro-life position or consider the prospect that an unborn child might be just that - an unborn child. There is no attempt to engage in good faith discussion. The pro-life perspective is immediately maligned and smeared as being anti-woman (apparently, the word “woman” can be defined again), authoritarian, and even racist. The mere suggestion that an unborn child could have any value whatsoever as a living human being is mocked and dismissed as religious nonsense. How can this be the status quo of our society? How can the people who claim to be driven by love and empathy have such a callous disregard for human life?

Just like the slave owners, they have taken on the position that these human beings are not human beings at all, but they are things - property. They have no rights, they have no personhood, and their owners have the fundamental right to do with them whatever they wish without government interference. You will recall that this was even the position of the Supreme Court in Scott vs Sandford that ruled that the government could not deprive its citizens of their property (i.e. their slaves). Additionally, there was and is a claim that any attempt at abolition is a violation of their rights, will cause economic hardship, will lead to harm and even death, that it will be cruel because the slave/unborn child will have a difficult life, etc. The parallels are apparent and they are not accidental. They point directly to the lengths people will go to justify and rationalize an abhorrent act against an individual, to dehumanize them, and to render them powerless. It the ultimate form of oppression. It was true in slavery. It is true in abortion.

So, I find myself saddened, not because of the prospect that Roe v Wade will be overturned, as I think that is clearly correct, but because of those who refuse to even consider the possibility that unborn children are human beings with value. It is a clear indicator of the moral decline in our society when one looks at how we see and treat our children. Between COVID, gender ideology, CRT victimhood training, and abortion, our society is clearly in moral collapse. I think future generations will look back on us and our handling of abortion the same way we look back on those who lived during slavery. They will be appalled and they will ask themselves the same questions of us that we ask of those who lived back then. “How could they allow this to happen?”