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Yes, Vice President Harris, let’s compare slavery and abortion

What is the difference between choosing to have a slave and choosing to have an abortion? Simply this: the unborn are not accorded the same rights as those who are born, that is, those who could be made slaves.

President Joe Biden signs an executive order at the White House in Washington July 8, 2022. Pictured with Biden are Vice President Kamala Harris, left, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and . Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. (CNS photo/Kevin Lamarque, Reuters)

Vice President Kamala Harris, who “takes stuff seriously”, has offered a supposedly serious argument against Dobbs. Harris

on Monday compared the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning a constitutional right to abortion to America’s history of slavery, saying “our country has a history of claiming ownership over human bodies.”

Harris’ scathing analogy came in a speech at the NAACP’s 113th convention, where also she blasted many of the “so-called leaders” of the anti-abortion movement for being “the same ones who are passing laws to restrict the ability to vote” on state laws that could make it easier to terminate pregnancies.

Well, one VP’s scathing analogy is another citizen’s deeply flawed, inverted, and failed analogy. Harris insists that taking away the “right” to kill one’s unborn child is akin to slavery—taking away one’s personal freedom. In the words of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: “[Harris] is correct. Today’s decisions are criminalizing doctors and essentially taking the rights away from women, taking the freedom away from women. Really taking away people’s privacy.”

In fact, slavery and abortion do share some important parallels. But they aren’t what Harris thinks, in large part because she and other pro-abortion zealots will not and cannot acknowledge the personhood of the unborn child.

Back in early 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama had told Christianity Today, “I don’t know anybody who is pro-abortion. I think it’s very important to start with that premise.” I wrote: “Well, sure it is. Otherwise people might get the wrong idea and think that your 100% NARAL rating and unrelenting supporting of abortion might actually be pro-abortion.” Later that year, I took up the topic again in a lengthy InsightScoop blog post, after a reader had insisted the “pro-choice” is not the same as “pro-abortion”, and then described my argument against that sophistic nonsense as “overly-simplistic”.

What follows, in full, is my response. Yes, it is long, but I think it is one of my better blog posts (but you be the judge; there are several thousand to read!). And it compares slavery to abortion in a way serves as a partial response, at the very least, to VP Harris’s ridiculous statements. (Note: I’m not certain that all of the links work, but I’ve left them in for context.)

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Well, goodness, I do dislike being perceived at being overly-simplistic, so let’s see if I can be a little more complicated this time around. Let’s start with the statement: “Obama is pro-choice rather than pro-abortion.”

First, what does that mean? I ask the question seriously. In other words, what does it mean when someone says, “I am pro-choice”? What is being chosen? What choice is being supported, upheld, and favored? And why is that choice being supported, upheld, and favored? I think it is fair to say that most of those folks who use the description “pro-choice” claim they support a woman’s right to choose to either bring a pregnancy to term or to terminate the pregnancy; they uphold a woman’s right to make choices about her body, especially when it comes to issues that are sexual and reproductive in nature; and they favor the government abstaining from any infringement upon those rights and choices.

In common parlance—and political parlance as well—being pro-choice is primarily about a woman’s right to either have a child or terminate her pregnancy. Which is why, for example, the NARAL site states, “In 1973, the Supreme Court guaranteed American women the right to choose abortion in its landmark decision Roe v. Wade. In Roe, the Court issued a compromise between the state’s ability to restrict abortion and a woman’s right to choose. … Making abortion access more difficult and dangerous is a key tactic of the anti-choice movement. … The anti-choice movement’s ultimate goal is to outlaw abortion in all circumstances.” Numerous other examples could be given, but it should be fairly evident that the word “choice” is primarily aligned with abortion, which is why “anti-choice” almost always means “anti-abortion.”

What the reader above insinuates (and others argue more directly) is that it is unfair to describe Sen. Obama as “pro-abortion” when he 1) doesn’t force women to have abortions, 2) denies that anyone is really “pro-abortion”, and 3) supposedly works for a lessening of the number of abortions. But this is mere sophistry, built largely on the notion that only those who force women to have abortions are actually pro-abortion.

But this defies both commonsense and a logical use of language. In his parody [Bill] Donahue used the example of racism and supporting David Duke, but I think we are better served here if we use the example of slavery, for two reasons: 1) it provides a more specific example of behavior than does racism (which can be construed in very vague ways) and 2) it closely parallels abortion in how it involves ownership and control of another person and the denial of that person’s rights.

Now, which of the following could reasonably be considered “pro-slavery”?:

• Believing that slavery should be enforced on a certain group of people. (Yes, obviously.)
• Supporting the right of others to be able to have slaves if they choose so. (I would say so.)
• Insisting that the decision to have slaves is a matter for the potential slave owner to decide for himself and that such a decision should be protected by law. (Again, I would say so.)
• Demanding that the government should not be involved in keeping people from having slaves if they so choose, and supporting legislation to that end. (Yes, without a doubt)

These actions and stances are all “pro-slavery”—that is, they each, in various ways, are in favor of the practice and reality of slavery even though not all of them are based on the belief that everyone in a certain group or class of society should have slaves. Put another way, the merely complacent position of believing that slavery is alright for some people can be fairly construed as being “pro-slavery,” even if the person with that perspective never acts upon it. But if they do act upon it and work actively for the right to own slaves, etc., there can be no doubt that they support slavery and are thus “pro-slavery.”

But what if such a person said, “When it comes to slavery, I am ‘pro-choice,’ not pro-slavery”? What would a reasonable person think? The reader states, “But one would be unfairly slandering Obama to say simply that he is pro-abortion because of his pro-choice stance.” This misrepresents the character of Sen. Obama’s position: he is not pro-abortion because he is pro-choice; rather, he is “pro-choice” because he is pro-abortion. In blunt terms, the descriptive “pro-choice” is a semantic sleight of hand which suggests that the coin is in the hand wishing to have a “right to choose” when it is actually in the hand choosing the right to kill an unborn child. For those who say they are “pro-choice,” the real concern is the one doing the choosing, while for those who are pro-life, the concern is the one who has no choice at all.

So what is the difference between choosing to have a slave and choosing to have an abortion? Simply this: the unborn are not accorded the same rights as those who are born, that is, those who could be made slaves. Or, put differently, the issue is the moral status of the unborn compared to the born. “Most supporters of abortion choice,” writes Dr. Francis Beckwith in Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge, 2007), “agree with pro-life advocates that the question of abortion’s permissibility rests on the moral status of the unborn: abortion is prima facie unjustified homicide if and only if the unborn entity is a full-fledged member of the human community (i.e., a person or a subject of moral rights). Most abortion-choice advocates also agree with pro-life supporters that the unborn entity is a human being insofar as it belongs to the species Homo sapiens. Where they disagree is over the question of the moral status of the unborn. These abortion advocates argue that the unborn entity is not a person and hence not a subject of moral rights until some decisive moment in fetal or postnatal development” (p. 130).

The reader states, “The moral problem with an Obama candidacy is its opposition to making abortion illegal.” Again, let’s use the analogy: “The moral problem with Mr. Smith is his opposition to making slavery illegal.” If Mr. Smith is opposed to slavery being illegal, it follows that he is in favor of it being legal. And if he is in favor of slavery being legal, he is pro-slavery. Likewise, Sen. Obama is pro-abortion; there is simply no way a person can look at his record (see this NARAL PDF) and conclude that his protection, promotion, and providing for “choice”—that is, abortion—is anything but “pro.”

The reader—who is a Catholic making a case for Catholic support of Sen. Obama—states, “Obama has spoken out and worked consistently to lower abortion rates.” Likewise, the NARAL fact sheet mentioned above states, “In addition to his pro-choice record, Sen. Obama has cosponsored legislation that would prevent unintended pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion.” It then lists these three pieces of legislation:

• Sexual Assault Survivors Emergency Treatment Act, H.B.320, introduced on 1/13/99 (Illinois State Senate).
• Prevention First Act, S.20, introduced on 1/24/05 (U.S. Senate).
• Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act, S.2916, introduced on 5/19/06 (U.S. Senate).

Each of these prominently features the use of contraceptives as an essential means of reducing abortions. The “Sexual Assault Survivors Emergency Treatment Act” states, for example, “Within 120 days after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 92nd General Assembly, every hospital providing services to sexual assault survivors in accordance with a plan approved under Section 2 must develop a protocol that ensures that each survivor of sexual assault will receive medically and factually accurate and written and oral information about emergency contraception…”

The 2005 “Prevention First Act” has some 95 references to “contraceptives” and “contraception”; it is also known by these titles: “Emergency Contraception Education Act,” “Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act,” “Family Planning State Empowerment Act,” and “Truth in Contraception Act.”

In similar fashion, the 2006 “Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act” is described in this way: “To amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to expand access to contraceptive services for women and men under the Medicaid program, help low income women and couples prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce abortion, and for other purposes.” It also states, “A woman should have equal access to contraceptive services to help prevent an unintended pregnancy and to pregnancy-related care if she does become pregnant.”

In 2007 Sen. Obama stated, in support of The Prevention Through Affordable Access Act, that:

We must do more to help low-income women and college students access affordable contraceptive drugs. No woman should be turned away from university clinics and health centers because the cost of prescription drugs is out of reach. Access to contraceptives is essential to lowering the rate of unintended pregnancies in this country, and we need to make sure these drugs are affordable and accessible. I thank Planned Parenthood and this bill’s co-sponsors for supporting this common-sense and necessary legislation. [emphasis added]

In other words, the central component of Sen. Obama’s work in reducing abortion rates is increasing the use of contraceptives and access to contraceptives. And what does the Catholic Church teach about contraceptives? The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church states:

Also to be rejected is recourse to contraceptive methods in their different forms [524]:  this rejection is based on a correct and integral understanding of the person and human sexuality [525] and represents a moral call to defend the true development of peoples [526]. On the other hand, the same reasons of an anthropological order justify recourse to periodic abstinence during times of the woman’s fertility [527]. Rejecting contraception and using natural methods for regulating births means choosing to base interpersonal relations between the spouses on mutual respect and total acceptance, with positive consequences also for bringing about a more human order in society. …

All programmes of economic assistance aimed at financing campaigns of sterilization and contraception, as well as the subordination of economic assistance to such campaigns, are to be morally condemned as affronts to the dignity of the person and the family. (pars. 233, 234)

Are Catholics to believe, then, that two evils—abortion and contraception—together somehow make a right? Or that the use of one evil (contraceptives) to reduce another evil (abortion) is somehow morally agreeable and acceptable? Does the end justify the means? Of course not. The sad ironies are that 1) contraceptives are essentially forms of abortion many contraceptives actually act as abortifacients, and 2) the evidence strongly suggests that the number of abortions increase as use of contraceptives becomes more common.

As Pope John Paul II noted in Evangelium vitae, “But despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree. … The close connection which exists, in mentality, between the practice of contraception and that of abortion is becoming increasingly obvious. It is being demonstrated in an alarming way by the development of chemical products, intrauterine devices and vaccines which, distributed with the same ease as contraceptives, really act as abortifacients in the very early stages of the development of the life of the new human being” (par 13).

A couple of further, quick points: the argument has also been made by some that Sen. Obama will reduce abortion through education. As someone who was subjected to “sex-ed” in the 1980s, forgive me for being a bit cynical about such an approach, especially if such education insists on being “neutral” when it comes to objective moral judgments. Authentic education comes from a specific system of belief about the value of human life and the purpose and meaning of human sexuality, not from a utlitarian, value-free series of classes that will most likely ignore or scoff at abstinence, never mind traditional virtues and beliefs about sexuality.

The argument has also been made that Sen. Obama will reduce abortion by somehow reducing poverty. This assumes that poverty is a primary motivation for women to have abortion and utilizes a pragmatic approach that largely ignores the moral dimensions of life issues. It also assumes that Sen. Obama would be able, if elected president, to reduce poverty. But, without going into the specifics of his economic policies or arguing about their strengths and weaknesses, why can’t it also be argued that he might actually increase poverty and thus increase the number of abortions? After all, the actual result of his economic policies won’t be known unless he is elected and they are implemented. It is, in other words, a crap shoot. Is that a responsible way to approach such matters?

Finally, returning to the analogy of slavery: imagine that someone who described themselves as “pro-choice” when it came to slavery supported legislation with the following language:

A man’s decision to buy, trade for, own, and control a slave is a personal choice. As such, decisions regarding slavery are best made by certain men, in consultation with other slave owners or trusted associates, without governmental interference. A government may not–

(1) deny or interfere with a man’s right to choose–
(A) to buy and own a slave;
(B) to sell a slave for financial gain or
(C) to terminate a slave where termination is necessary to protect the physical life or financial health of the slave owner and his family

He may call himself “pro-choice” when it comes to slavery. I may call him “pro-slavery.” Regardless, this much would be clear: the white man/slave owner would enjoy rights, protection, and moral status, while the slave would not. The slave, in fact, would be legally considered either non-human or sub-human, and that legal status would mean a life of subjection, denied the basic rights due every person.

Perhaps this is a good place to remark that those who would say that fair wages, good working conditions, affordable housing, decent healthcare, global warming, and such are equal to abortion in terms of moral weight seem to forget that when an unborn child is killed, they will never have an opportunity to have a job, own a home, get medical check-ups, or breath air (whether clean or polluted). Social justice means nothing if it doesn’t protect the unborn.

Those who call themselves “pro-choice” do so because they support the right to choose death for unborn children. They are “pro-abortion.” Sen. Obama is pro-abortion. The most recent example of this fact is his strong public support for the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which he has co-sponsored. On June 17, 2007, he told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that, “Well, the first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.”

The USCCB has strongly condemned FOCA and has linked to this National Committee for a Human Life Amendment page, which states:

FOCA is a radical bill. It creates a “fundamental right” to abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy. No governmental body at any level would be able to “deny or interfere with” this right, or to “discriminate” against the exercise of this right “in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.” For the first time, abortion would become an entitlement the government must condone and promote.

FOCA would go well beyond the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in imposing an extreme abortion regimen on our country. No other piece of legislation would have such a destructive impact on society’s ability to limit or regulate abortion. It would eliminate a broad range of laws—informed consent laws; parental involvement laws; laws promoting maternal health; abortion clinic regulations; government programs and facilities that pay for or promote childbirth and other health care without subsidizing abortion; conscience protection laws; laws prohibiting a particular abortion procedure (e.g., partial birth abortion); laws requiring that abortions only be performed by a licensed physician; and so on.

Does this sound like the sort of legislation that would be co-sponsored by someone serious about reducing the number of abortions in the U.S.? Does it sound like the sort of Act that would be supported and championed by someone who is really against abortion?

Honestly, I’m not here to say, “Vote for this person” or “Don’t vote for that person.” My point is simply this: as a Catholic, be honest about the facts and don’t let the misuse of language mislead you about the reality of things.

The great German philosopher Josef Pieper, who stood up the Nazis and suffered for it, wrote:

The reality of the word in eminent ways makes existential interaction happen. And so, if the word becomes corrupted, human existence itself will not remain unaffected and untainted. …the abuse of political power is fundamentally connected with the sophistic abuse of the word, indeed, finds in it the fertile soil in which to hide and grow and get ready, so much so that the latent potential of the totalitarian poison can be ascertained, as it were, by observing the symptom of the public abuse of language. (Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, pp. 14, 32-33).

And that, folks, is my not-so-simplistic response.


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About Carl E. Olson 1229 Articles
Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"?, co-editor/contributor to Called To Be the Children of God, co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax (Ignatius), and author of the "Catholicism" and "Priest Prophet King" Study Guides for Bishop Robert Barron/Word on Fire. His recent books on Lent and Advent—Praying the Our Father in Lent (2021) and Prepare the Way of the Lord (2021)—are published by Catholic Truth Society. He is also a contributor to "Our Sunday Visitor" newspaper, "The Catholic Answer" magazine, "The Imaginative Conservative", "The Catholic Herald", "National Catholic Register", "Chronicles", and other publications. Follow him on Twitter @carleolson.

13 Comments

  1. The constitutional issue is actually much simpler: is a fetus or slave a “person” as that term is used in the U.S. Constitution?

    Legally, a “person” is that which has rights. A natural person is that which has rights by nature, while an artificial person is that which has rights delegated to it. A natural person cannot be owned as its rights are part of what it means to exist and are therefore inalienable, while an artificial person must have an owner as its source of rights; an artificial person is an abstraction, a human construct that has no independent existence.

    In 1857 Justice Roger Brooke Taney, a “neo-Catholic” (a pre-1881 modernist), argued in his opinion in Scott v. Sandford (the Dred Scott decision) that “person” and “citizen” are equivalent terms. As Taney declared, the State confers citizenship at its discretion, therefore the State also confers personality. Taney concluded that because Scott was clearly not a citizen, he was also not a person, and therefore had no right to be free or anything else. This Supreme Court decision overturned the natural law basis of the U.S. Constitution and shifted sovereignty from the human person made by God, to the State created by man, in effect making God subservient to man.

    The Fourteenth Amendment in part overturned Scott and reaffirmed the natural law basis of the Constitution, securing to every PERSON the full spectrum of natural rights. Less than ten years later, however, in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873, the Supreme Court effectively nullified the Fourteenth Amendment, in part by mis-citing Taney’s decision in Scott, but largely by handing down what constitutional scholar William Winslow Crosskey called one of the worst decisions in judicial history, written so vaguely and “craftily” (Crosskey’s word) as to allow the Supreme Court to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment any way it chose by upholding or dismissing the privileges and immunities clause (based on whether someone is a person and thus has natural rights) as it found convenient.

    Exactly a century after Slaughterhouse, the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade “rewrote” the Constitution in two ways. One, the case was moot. Prior to 1973, it was held that no federal court could try a moot case. The baby had already been born, and it should have been a non-issue. In order to get the case to the Supreme Court, however, the interpretation of the Constitution was changed to mean that a federal court could not try a moot case in most instances — a meaningless stipulation, as it allowed any court to try moot cases at its discretion.

    Two, the decision in Roe v. Wade was based on the claim that the Court did not know if a fetus is a human being, but it is not a person as that term in used in the Constitution. This is extremely problematical.

    Most immediately, if the Court did not know whether a fetus is a human being, then it could not know if it is a person. Logically you cannot base a certainty on an uncertainty. The Court based its decision on a contradiction, invalidating it.

    Further, the decision ignored the natural law basis of the Constitution by again separating personality from humanity and reaffirmed the nullification of the Fourteenth Amendment that (as seen in the Court discerning an implied and derived “right to privacy” that overrides explicit natural and inalienable rights) effectively vested the Court with unlimited power.

    • Looking ahead, when Obergefell v. Hodges is ripe for judicial review, we will have on the U.S. Supreme Court a troglodyte Justice Jackson who can’t tell us what a woman is by nature until the court itself rules on women as citizens, with their rights confected by the State (as Taney conflated person with citizen).

      Perhaps more persons of color (again, “persons” first, not “colored persons”) will resent the political bundling of sexual deviancy as meriting a conferred “civil right” equivalent with the real and natural right recognized (not invented) for all races.

      The oxymoron “gay marriage”: parody not parity.

  2. Great article, great response to VP Harris.
    An indication of how pro-abortion they are, and not pro-choice, is the fact that in the past, whenever states tried to pass laws that would give a woman informed choice, such as mandatory ultrasounds, two day waiting periods and literature that would show there was a baby inside the woman, they fought these proposals tooth and nail in the courts.
    Senator Warren even wants to outlaw pro-life pregnancy centers.

  3. It’s an eye opener that our tax and deficit monies are being used to pay this person and supply her with federal benefits.

    What a return on investment! To be born with such wisdom…..

  4. What is understood within the mind, spiritual by nature, is conveyed by images, signs, and symbols that are material by nature. That is due to the first principle of all knowledge, that known through the senses.
    Language and the use of words is a key astutely understood by Carl Olson in his response to VP Harris’ understanding of abortion restriction as an assault on her liberty, and a feature of slavery, judicially approved sovereignty of another over her body. His prima facie premise is the meaning attached to words, his thesis whether rightly or wrongly. Encapsulated in the end line taken from Josef Pieper’s [among the very best of 20th century philosophers] Abuse of Language Abuse of Power.
    VP Ms Harris wishes to perceive the fetus, Latin for prenatal infant, as a part of her body rather than independent new life, the beginning of another person. Consequently Obama’s prochoice rather than pro abortion, Harris’ prolife legislation [striking down of Roe by the Court] as slavery. Michael Greaney adds to this important discussion with an excellent rundown of the juridical history of the understanding of person and rights. Olson’s focus on use and misuse of wording is supported by Greaney’s reference to natural law.
    If there is a common denominator for all regarding how we interpret, or intend by the use of the readable, tangible word is within the spiritual nature of the person conveying their thoughts in the material instrument, the spoken and written word. That is what is written within the soul, on the hearts of men by God, the Natural Law Within. Why the Decalogue is not considered a revelation, rather a reminder. As Archbishop Naumann holds in his essay in CWR, that abortion is a human rights issue more than a religious issue. It’s known by reason. Reason formed within, acknowledgment of the natural law within, which Aquinas calls a reflection of the Eternal Law. The undergirding of knowledge of truth, and the formation of a good conscience.

  5. The difference between a fetus destroyed at the hands of an abortionist & an unborn child delivered by a doctor or midwife seems to consist in their status of “wantedness.”

    Slaves had a great monetary value to slavemasters-at least those slaves of working age & with skills. It was a tragic thing to have bounty hunters pursuing runaway slaves but that did indicate the slave’s value & that they were not seen as disposable property. Excepting perhaps in the cases of the very aged. I’ve read about elderly Connecticut slaves turned out & given freedom once they were no longer of use.

    In our culture children developing in the womb only seem to have value randomly per the parents’ circumstances. And I think eugenically also. Much promotion of feticide-not to mention IVF- has a eugenic component going on.

  6. This is an unfortunate article and does a disservice to our cause. While morally in error, the Vice-President’s analogy is entirely logical.
    Of course, this article has some infantile plausibility. Just as being pro-slavery did not mean that one believed that everyone should be enslaved; being “pro-choice,” i.e., pro-abortion, does not, presumably, mean that one believes that all babies should be aborted. And being “pro-life” (actually meaning anti-choice) is an assertion that no woman has the normative right to choose to abort her baby, just as being anti-slavery would mean abolishing slavery entirely. So, as this logic goes, just as anti-slavery means that there be no slaves or conditions of enslavement, being “pro-life” (anti-choice) means that there be no abortions.
    However, upon any reflection whatsoever, this re-working of the analogy fails. The “choice” involved does not settle on the pregnant woman and the slave-holder (“choosing to have an abortion and choosing to own a slave”). The choices involved (or “freedoms”), pertain to the pregnant woman and the slave. Who is compelled to serve whom? Anyone with an ounce of discernment will see this.
    Twice a day, a stopped clock is correct in telling the time, and the same goes with Vice President’s logic (though not her morality). The pro-abortion position and the Abolitionists share the exact same principle, to wit: No one can be legally compelled to serve another against that person’s will. The slave is compelled to serve his lawful master, and the woman is compelled to carry her baby to term. It is the claim of ownership over another’s body (master over slave, baby over mother). Harris is guilty of no inversion, and no amount of sophistry is going to obfuscate this.
    While the baby’s claim to “enslave” the mother is far more well-grounded than that of the lawful master over his slave—inasmuch as the former is set in nature and the latter is grounded only in a very conditional construct (and everyone starts out a newborn, while not everyone starts out a slave)—this does not change the logic. To any discerning mind, it should be obvious that engaging in thinly-veiled sleight of hand does not in the long-run advance the cause of the unborn, and we would do well to eschew it.
    Chief Justice Taney most certainly did not deny that Dred Scott was a person. Taney merely denied that Dred Scott could be a citizen as contemplated by the U.S. Constitution (of that time), thereby stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction over Dred’s emancipation suit. [Moreover, Taney did not say that Dred Scott was not a citizen and therefore Dred could not be a person. One has to be a person in order to be a citizen, but one does not have to be a citizen in order to be a person. Besides being an obvious point, there are, to this day, many people who hold no citizenship anywhere; no one claims that they are not people, due to this lack of status.] Said Chief Justice Taney:
    “Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guaranteed by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.”
    To which question, regardless of history to the contrary, the Chief Justice answered in the negative.
    Furthermore, the Dred Scott case did not overturn natural law. There is no sacrosanct natural law right to freedom, neither for slaves, nor for pregnant women. And (regardless of what Chisholm v. Georgia might have held) sovereignty does not, per natural law, reside in the human person. The State was created by God inasmuch as He created Man as a social creature. Let’s stick to the moral facts: You cannot kill your baby, and you may not normatively refuse to carry your baby to term. And we will use the State to enforce this prohibition.

  7. I wonder what Vice President Harris thinks about women who have been destroyed by. abortion when they realize that they have killed their own child. This issue is a big cover-up by the. secular press. The Democrat Party is the Party of Satan. Their support for abortion, gay marriage, and transgenderism is Satanic in nature.

  8. As a AA descendent of 5 generations of enslaved people (circa early 1700s to 1840/1863 virignia) I reflect on female ancestors who were raped and forced to bear children into that evil institution I believe that VP Harriss’ analogy is correct.
    When I hear my Catholic friends talking I really try to understand their perspective
    and sense that it is heartfelt But thankfully none of them have been gaslighting enough to make the opposite assertion— that abortion is akin to slavery ( as some have posted her). They know they can’t be taken seriously as neither the Catholic Church nor the Suprement Court ever opposed slavery but utilized that evil institution it to consolidate their own power interests at the expense of millions of destroyed lives.
    I personally have had a child out of marriage and would not chose an abortion. Yet I think if raped women have access to it– that is a basic dignity. Jesus took every opportunity in the Gospel lift women up out of the social constraints of society and degradation placed upon them. I pray that women being raped by Russian soldiers have access to abortion care should they chose to. I also pray that institutions that exploit this issue become more honest on all fronts that includes the church and the media. And please do not write me and say if my enslaved AA ancestor had chose to abort I would not be here. In reality the dignity of their lives is so much more important than the offspring they bring into this world. I am more than OK with not being her if it meant they did not have to suffer long term consequences of violence repeatedly visiting upon their person. Thanks for posting if your open minded enough.

  9. There are many adjectives that could be used to describe our Vice-President.

    ‘Serious’ is NOT one of them.

2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks

  1. Yes, Vice President Harris, let’s compare slavery and abortion | Passionists Missionaries Kenya, Vice Province of St. Charles Lwanga, Fathers & Brothers
  2. Yes, Vice President Harris, let’s compare slavery and abortion | Franciscan Sisters of St Joseph (FSJ) , Asumbi Sisters Kenya

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