Slavery, Abolition, and Lessons for the Pro-life Movement

[vern_humphrey]

Philip P:

If you want to talk about voting, there’s already a thread for that. This deals more with strategy, and especially with attempts to draw lessons for an effective pro-life strategy based off of the historical experience of Abolition.

The strategy is to isolate the pro-abortion leaders in both parties and remove them from power.
Philip P:

Asking us to “look at the leadership of the Democratic Party” doesn’t really tell us much. Why not then go a step further and tell us what we’re supposed to be looking for, what should be happening, and then giving us an argument for why this will work and what it will accomplish.

When you play the fool, there is always the danger that people will come to think you aren’t playing at all.

In a thread on abortion, what do YOU think you should look for when you look at the leaders of any political party?

Come on – think hard. You can figure it out.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon12.gif

 

[Philip_P]

vern humphrey:

In a thread on abortion, what do YOU think you should look for when you look at the leaders of any political party?

I think you should look for strategies with a reasonable chance of success. Labeling a politician prolife or proabortion is too vague. It tells us nothing of what strategies are being favored, and so gives us little to evaluate.

For instance, by “pro-life” does that simply mean that a politician favors making abortion illegal? Would that politician support, for instance, a ban that made an exception for the life of the mother, rape or incest? If not, is such categorical refusal to negotiate an effective strategy? How does this compare historically - have moral campaigns in the past done better under a pragmatic approach or under an approach that refuses to make any concessions at any point?

 

[legeorge]

As Catholics, haven’t we figured out yet that getting rid of abortion is not an either (law) /or (popular opinion) issue. It is both/and! Unless we have a unified front on both sides, there will be no progress. Yes, we must work on judges and legislation. Yes, we must work on changing the minds and hearts of Americans. Whithout both prongs on the plug, the light simply will not go on.

 

[vern_humphrey]

legeorge:

As Catholics, haven’t we figured out yet that getting rid of abortion is not an either (law) /or (popular opinion) issue. It is both/and! Unless we have a unified front on both sides, there will be no progress. Yes, we must work on judges and legislation. Yes, we must work on changing the minds and hearts of Americans. Whithout both prongs on the plug, the light simply will not go on.

And the way to do this is to NOT support pro-abortion leaders. When politicians see that they cannot get elected on a pro-abortion stance, they will change (or simply lose power.) Without leadership, this mass killing will stop.

 

[legeorge]

vern humphrey:

And the way to do this is to NOT support pro-abortion leaders. When politicians see that they cannot get elected on a pro-abortion stance, they will change (or simply lose power.) Without leadership, this mass killing will stop.

This would be included in ‘working on legislation’. We definately need to vote for politicians who will support such legislation. As well as encourage our religious leaders to start speaking up about this issue to help form the consciences of the faithful. We need to be visible (out in front of the clinics) with messages of LIFE. We need to have more support in place for women who feel they have no option except abortion including adoption programs and financial aid. We need to get judges on the bench who will not make laws, but do what they are intended to do and interpret law which has been passed by the majority of America’s citizens. This is turning into a “chicken or the egg” argument, and I think we need to do all of the above at the same time. We need to be Pro-Life in ACTION *not * just in THEORY!!

 

[Philip_P]

legeorge:

As Catholics, haven’t we figured out yet that getting rid of abortion is not an either (law) /or (popular opinion) issue. It is both/and!

We need to have more support in place for women who feel they have no option except abortion including adoption programs and financial aid. We need to get judges on the bench who will not make laws, but do what they are intended to do and interpret law which has been passed by the majority of America’s citizens.

I agree that it has to be both/and rather than either/or. The either/or approach is, to my mind, primarily to blame for the impasse in the national abortion debate.

Specifically, it has become either the woman or the child, when it has to be both. Pro-woman, pro-child, pro-life. Too many on the pro-life side buy into the myth of the morally depraved woman who aborts without a moment’s thought. Too many on the pro-choice side buy into the myth that working against abortion means working against women. Both women and their children have a moral claim, and the only way to truly satisfy both claims is to choose life.

I’m interested, though, in your comment on financial aid. Perhaps you could expand on this?

 

[legeorge]

I’m interested, though, in your comment on financial aid. Perhaps you could expand on this?

Sure. Many women’s financial situation is a major factor in their abortion decision. For example, I help do fundraisers for low-income women and families to help with necessities like car seats, cribs, clothing, diapers, counseling, etc. Programs like W.I.C. help provide for nutritional need. Crisis pregnancy centers need funding. I know there are lots of programs like this out there, but they need to either be expanded or better publicized so that these women know where to go for help. This is only one element of the overall picture, but it is a real concern that needs addressed.

 

[miguel]

Philip P:

…Put another way, must RVW be overturned *before *we can make real progress in ending abortion, or is it more likely that abortions will significantly decrease first, undermining support for RVW and so making its reversal more likely?

Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. So RVW doesn’t necessarily have to be overturned by the Supreme Court. Judicial review of abortion laws could be limited/eliminated by an act of Congress. That way all the effort that goes into electing pro-life legislators and passing pro-life legislation stops being trashed by the Courts. And it stops being such a huge political battle every time a justice dies or retires. We have allowed the Courts to have way too much power, far beyond what Hamilton envisioned in the Federalist Papers.

 

[miguel]

Philip P:

…Why is it that it is precisely where slavery was least entrenched that the movement to end it was the strongest?

I don’t know if the movement to end it in Britain was any stronger than the movement to end it here. But resistance to ending it certainly was stronger here because of the entrenched economic interest.
Philip P:

…Is it valid to draw a parallel to abortion - that is, might it prove that if abortion occured with much less frequency it would be easier to push for its abolition?

The fight against abortion has been occurring on multiple fronts. Obviously the immediate goal is to save as many babies as possible. But ultimately they must be protected by law.

 

[vern_humphrey]

miguel:

Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. So RVW doesn’t necessarily have to be overturned by the Supreme Court. Judicial review of abortion laws could be limited/eliminated by an act of Congress. That way all the effort that goes into electing pro-life legislators and passing pro-life legislation stops being trashed by the Courts. And it stops being such a huge political battle every time a justice dies or retires. We have allowed the Courts to have way too much power, far beyond what Hamilton envisioned in the Federalist Papers.

Even better would be to require all interpretations of the Constitution and laws be based solely on Original Intent – and if you don’t LIKE what the Consitution says, you amend it, not re-interpret it.

 

[miguel]

vern humphrey:

Even better would be to require all interpretations of the Constitution and laws be based solely on Original Intent – and if you don’t LIKE what the Consitution says, you amend it, not re-interpret it.

That was the whole point of putting an amendment process into the Constitution. But judicial power has outgrown the Constitution. They need to be brought back under Constitutional control…preferably by the other two branches of government acting within their Constitutional authority.

 

[vern_humphrey]

miguel:

That was the whole point of putting an amendment process into the Constitution. But judicial power has outgrown the Constitution. They need to be brought back under Constitutional control…preferably by the other two branches of government acting within their Constitutional authority.

It seems such a simple idea – the Constitution means what the people who wrote it, and those who ratified it say it means.

Yet nowadays, judges can get away with citing “an emerging consensus” as the basis for a ruling. Sad.

 

[SHEMP]

vern humphrey:

On the Catholic Online Forum, I find people claiming to be Catholic who deny that the Democratic Party has a pro-abortion plank. When I cut and paste the plank, they say it’s not “pro-abortion,” only “pro-choice.” (As if there were a difference.)

With Catholics like this, who needs enemies?

The Democratic Party should study their own party during the pre-civil war. Stephen A. Douglas argued for popular sovereignty. He argued that the federal government should not decide the moral issues of the day. He argued that each person and each person’s local government can decide this for themselves. The southern Democrats wanted each individual to freely decide the issue of slavery for themselves. They did not want anyone to interfere with this decision. In essence they were “Pro-choice”. But similar to todays Pro-choice Democrats they also wanted the federal government to protect their choice and to actively promote that choice with a Federal Slave Code and a strong Fugitive Slave Law. This is similar to the Pro-choice Democrats wanting to spend federal money on abortion and to help promote easy access to abortion.

The Democratic Party split in 1860. The Pro-slavery southern Democrat could not support the Douglas candidacy. This is similar to the debate in the current Democratic party. There is a “Southern” wing of the current Democratic party that does not want to give up an inch.

 

[vern_humphrey]

SHEMP:

The Democratic Party should study their own party during the pre-civil war. Stephen A. Douglas argued for popular sovereignty. He argued that the federal government should not decide the moral issues of the day. He argued that each person and each person’s local government can decide this for themselves. The southern Democrats wanted each individual to freely decide the issue of slavery for themselves. They did not want anyone to interfere with this decision. In essence they were “Pro-choice”. But similar to todays Pro-choice Democrats they also wanted the federal government to protect their choice and to actively promote that choice with a Federal Slave Code and a strong Fugitive Slave Law. This is similar to the Pro-choice Democrats wanting to spend federal money on abortion and to help promote easy access to abortion.

The Democratic Party split in 1860. The Pro-slavery southern Democrat could not support the Douglas candidacy. This is similar to the debate in the current Democratic party. There is a “Southern” wing of the current Democratic party that does not want to give up an inch.

The parallels between the Abortion issue and the Slavery issue are manifold. You would think we could learn from history, wouldn’t youi?

 

[miguel]

vern humphrey:

It seems such a simple idea – the Constitution means what the people who wrote it, and those who ratified it say it means.

Yet nowadays, judges can get away with citing “an emerging consensus” as the basis for a ruling. Sad.

Not only sad…dangerous.

 

[Hildebrand]

Philip P:

Keeping with our historical parallels, then, did Dredd Scott make the Abolition movement untenable? I usually hear that case paired with Brown v. Topeka Board of Ed as its opposite, but that was in 1954 - long after abolition and Emancipation (though not before true equal protection under the law was granted).

There is a MAJOR difference between slavery and abortion.

Abortion was never a constitutional “right” until the 1970s when the right was invented by the justices of the Supreme Court.

Slavery was directly addressed in the US Constitution as an accepted practice. "Slavery is seen in the Constitution in a few key places. The first is in the Enumeration Clause, where representatives are apportioned. Each state is given a number of representatives based on its population - in that population, slaves, called “other persons,” are counted as three-fifths of a whole person. This compromise was hard-fought, with Northerners wishing that slaves, legally property, but uncounted, much as mules and horses are uncounted. Southerners, however, well aware of the high proportion of slaves to the total population in their states, wanted them counted as whole persons despite their legal status. The three-fifths number was a ratio used by the Congress in contemporary legislation and was agreed upon with little debate.

In Article 1, Section 9, Congress is limited, expressly, from prohibiting the “Importation” of slaves, before 1808. The slave trade was a bone of contention for many, with some who supported slavery abhorring the slave trade. The 1808 date, a compromise of 20 years, allowed the slave trade to continue, but placed a date-certain on its survival. Congress eventually passed a law outlawing the slave trade that became effective on January 1, 1808.

The Fugitive Slave Clause is the last mention. In it, a problem that slave states had with extradition of escaped slaves was resolved. The laws of one state, the clause says, cannot excuse a person from “Service or Labour” in another state. The clause expressly requires that the state in which an escapee is found deliver the slave to the state he escaped from “on Claim of the Party.”"

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_slav.html#const
Philip P:

Put another way, must RVW be overturned *before *

we can make real progress in ending abortion, or is it more likely that abortions will significantly decrease first, undermining support for RVW and so making its reversal more likely?

If the number of abortions decreases significantly, the chance of reversal of RVW is significantly lessened. Why? Because abortion would then be “safe, legal, and rare.” Why would more Americans support making abortion illegal after abortion numbers “significantly decrease(s)”. It is like the Holocaust. If 50 Jews were killed every year in the Holocaust, it would have been a tragedy among tragedies during WWII, and we would know nothing about it. Because the Holocaust was so horrific, everyone is repulsed by the gravity and immensity of it. The higher the death toll of abortion, the higher chance of Roe being overturned.

The same applies to late term abortions. When adult human beings looks at human being in the embryo stage of life, they do not see anything that they can relate to. As a result, most human beings in the adult stage of life do not consider killing a embryonic human being as anything immoral or wrong. With partial birth abortion and other late term abortions, when adult human beings witness the killing of a fully developed human baby… horror, disgust, outrage are understandable reactions, also increasing the chance of gaining support against abortion.
Although, don’t forget we have science and technology on our side. Science supports our arguments on the humanity of the child and as new technologies are developed, we are capable of seeing the child more fully. Recently with the 3-D/4-D Ultrasound, one cannot deny this new technology was a shot across the bow of the abortion advocates.

RVW must be overturned WHILE we are electing pro-life politicians, enacting pro-life laws, spreading the culture of life, etc. There cannot be a limited or narrow attack against the barbarity of abortion, there must be all encompassing and comprehensive assault on it.

 

[Philip_P]

miguel:

I don’t know if the movement to end it in Britain was any stronger than the movement to end it here. But resistance to ending it certainly was stronger here because of the entrenched economic interest.

Hmm, I was actually thinking about Britain-Britain comparison, not Britain US. The Abolition movement was much stronger in England, where there were almost no slaves, than it was in the West Indies, where the entire economy depended on slaves (and where there were also a series of very violent rebellions, the most violent being in Haiti which, while French, severely scared all Caribbean slave owners).

I don’t really know enough to make a good comparison of British abolitionist sentiment to American. At any rate, it does seem to have been earlier in Britain, where it essentially started.

BTW, an excellent book on the British anti-slavery movement which I read not too long ago (and which explains why I have Abolition on the mind) is Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild.

 

[Philip_P]

Hildebrand:

If the number of abortions decreases significantly, the chance of reversal of RVW is significantly lessened. Why? Because abortion would then be “safe, legal, and rare.” Why would more Americans support making abortion illegal after abortion numbers “significantly decrease(s)”. It is like the Holocaust. If 50 Jews were killed every year in the Holocaust, it would have been a tragedy among tragedies during WWII, and we would know nothing about it. Because the Holocaust was so horrific, everyone is repulsed by the gravity and immensity of it. The higher the death toll of abortion, the higher chance of Roe being overturned.

The same applies to late term abortions. When adult human beings looks at human being in the embryo stage of life, they do not see anything that they can relate to. As a result, most human beings in the adult stage of life do not consider killing a embryonic human being as anything immoral or wrong. With partial birth abortion and other late term abortions, when adult human beings witness the killing of a fully developed human baby… horror, disgust, outrage are understandable reactions, also increasing the chance of gaining support against abortion.
Although, don’t forget we have science and technology on our side. Science supports our arguments on the humanity of the child and as new technologies are developed, we are capable of seeing the child more fully. Recently with the 3-D/4-D Ultrasound, one cannot deny this new technology was a shot across the bow of the abortion advocates.

RVW must be overturned WHILE we are electing pro-life politicians, enacting pro-life laws, spreading the culture of life, etc. There cannot be a limited or narrow attack against the barbarity of abortion, there must be all encompassing and comprehensive assault on it.

I’m going to skip over all the Constitutional arguments folks have brought up for now because, to be honest, I have some reading up to do (though with Roberts nominee, this seems as good a time as any for this sort of thing).

As far as an RVW reversal being *less *likely with decreasing numbers of abortions, I disagree. You mention late-term abortions. These are the common of all abortions, yet it is restrictions on late-term abortions that enjoy the greatest public support. Also, note that many women’s groups cite a fear of losing their perceived “rights” when attacking anti-abortion groups. Yet a “right” that is not being exercised is not one people are likely to feel overly threatened at the prospect of losing. Notice how it was northern, non-slave owners who were quickest to reject the idea that there was a “right” to own a human being, and the small slaveholders who were least opposed to the Abolition movment.

I think that if there were less abortions (I mean a lot less, like less than a quarter of the current rate), there would be less objection to overturning RVW as it would tend to be seen as a mostly superfluous law. You may be right that there might not be more *support *for overturning it, but I think there is sufficient support that even just having less opposition might be enough.

 

[Hildebrand]

Philip P:

Hmm, I was actually thinking about Britain-Britain comparison, not Britain US. The Abolition movement was much stronger in England, where there were almost no slaves.

You cannot compare abortion to slavery in these cases.

When more than half the population of the US would potentially be personally effected by overturning RVW. It would in effect strip away “rights” of women to kill their child when the child is unwanted, burdensome, disabled, etc. And it would effect men who want to be free of children, especially when he has multiple partners and wants to “live life without consequences” and in “full freedom”.

Slavery is more easily defeated when it is not widely practiced. For obvious reasons…

 

[Philip_P]

legeorge:

Sure. Many women’s financial situation is a major factor in their abortion decision. For example, I help do fundraisers for low-income women and families to help with necessities like car seats, cribs, clothing, diapers, counseling, etc. Programs like W.I.C. help provide for nutritional need. Crisis pregnancy centers need funding. I know there are lots of programs like this out there, but they need to either be expanded or better publicized so that these women know where to go for help. This is only one element of the overall picture, but it is a real concern that needs addressed.

I’d like to see a significant increase in such aid, but better publicizing programs would definitely be a good idea. Many people do not know what is available. For instance, there are actually a number of health coverage options available for low income people (especially in large cities like NY), but many are unaware of them. I suspect the same is true for crisis-pregnancy and childrearing support programs.

I do wonder why rich pro-lifers don’t all get together and launch a PR blitz to raise awareness of the help that is out there. Unfortunately, it seems to be negative PR that gets the money - demonizing political opponents or telling women they’re going to hell. How nice would it be to walk down a Manhattan sidewalk and see a big ad for an agency providing diapers and baby formula, for instance, instead of the latest blow-em-up movie ad on the side of the bus.