Striking Similarities

A clear analogy can be made between slavery in the United States in the 1800s and abortion in the 20th and 21st centuries. Both slavery and abortion boast of personal property rights as paramount to liberty and freedom. The slave owner said that it was his right to do what he desired with his property. The abortion advocates cry that the woman has a right to do what she wishes with the unborn baby. Both positions ignore the freedom of the enslaved. Both positions focus only on the right of the owner. The slave owner’s rights trump those of the slave. The woman’s rights trump those of the baby.

In the nineteenth century, proponents of slavery vigorously fought to expand slavery. They knew it would die if it remained restricted while free states continued to grow and outnumber the slave states. Therefore, they sought expansion. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was an attempt to break the stranglehold of the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Maine to enter the Union as a Free State only if Missouri could enter as a slave state to maintain the balance of slavery. There were also failed attempts to take territory away in Mexico, Cuba, and Central America—all for the expansion of slavery. The Dred Scott case of 1857 was the most notorious attempt to give slavery the right to go anywhere. The recent overthrow of Roe vs. Wade has restricted abortion rights to the states that want it, much the way slavery was relegated to the South. The fight is not only to have abortion in those states that want it but to find a way to have it in all the states. Abortion is similar in that enough is never enough. Not until the Civil War of 1861 did the insatiable desire for more slavery stop. This same insatiable desire promotes abortion today.

Under slavery, the South refused to recognize the hardship of the slave. They boasted he was better off than the free worker in the North. They ignored his deprivation and suffering and focused on their honor, culture, and state rights. Such is the way a proponent of abortion refuses to recognize the unborn baby can feel pain at 18 weeks.

Despotism is one man ruling another man in a cruel and barbarous way. That is the definition of slavery, and it is also the definition of abortion. While abortion proponents are fixated on the woman’s right to her own body, they ignore the right of life to the unborn baby.

Harriet Beecher Stowe made the greatest indictment of slavery with her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1842. The book focused on the breakup of slave families and the pain it caused. After the book came out, it sold 300,000 in the first year, the equivalent of 3 million today. It sold more than 2 million in the first decade. It made the whole nation feel what a horrible, cursed thing slavery was. Her book was a vision of the bondage of millions of people. We now are witnessing the same awful atrocities in the killing of innocent babies every day!

The fight for life is having success, although you would never know it from the media. Half of the 50 states have declared abortion illegal. Abortions have gone down considerably, and the American public is becoming more aware of what abortion is and how important this fight to save these little lives is.