Abortion and slavery
I’m not sure why Andrew thinks likening abortion to slavery qualifies as a Malkin award nominee. I certainly understand that it’s likely to bog down an already heavily loaded subject – but is it really so far off base on the merits?
If you believe in your heart of hearts that an unborn child is nevertheless a child – a living, growing, human being – and yet the law of the land dictates that said living, growing human being is not in possession of even the most basic right – the right to life – then how different is this from slavery?
Indeed, an unborn child is even more helpless than a slave. They have no chance to escape should their mother decide to have an abortion. They have no faculty, no choice in the matter. Is it such a stretch to liken the plight of millions of the yet-to-be-born to the past plight of slaves?
Certainly if one didn’t actually believe that abortion was wrong or that a fetus was actually a baby, this would be an awfully cynical thing to say. But what about people whose faith and beliefs teach them that the unborn are people just like you and me?
What about Andrew Sullivan whose Catholic faith teaches him that abortion is murder and that the unborn are fully human, fully alive and deserving of their right to life?
Recall, the ranks of abolitionists were filled with the religious – sometimes the fanatically religious. On religious and particularly on Christian grounds they opposed the institution of slavery. Now on those same grounds they oppose abortion. The arguments are the same. Why is this such a troubling comparison? Even if you are a supporter of abortion, why is this such a troubling comparison?
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I’m not going to play the outrage card here, but I do find this post more than a little insulting. The pro-choice movement is based fundamentally on liberal values: privacy, the freedom to do as one wishes with one’s body, the belief that it’s not government’s job to make decisions and policies that are best left to the family and the community. The pro-slavery movement was predicated on an entirely different set of values that are anything but liberal: white supremacy, aristocracy, greed, and a cultural conservatism so deep that the South feared even the modest changes that Abraham Lincoln stood for at first would destroy the South, leading to mongrelization, etc. Agree with its precepts or not, the pro-choice movement is based on a set of values that most people agree with in this country, while the pro-slavery ideology was based on corruption of all of that.
I’m pro-choice but not an absolutist. I broadly agree with Roe v. Wade but I support parental consent and bans on late-term and partial-birth abortions. I’m generally not too impressed with the abortion rights movement in general, as I see it as absolutist, inflexible, incapable of outreach and out of touch. That is, by the way, approximately how I see the pro-life movement as well. So I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle of all this, and I don’t think I’m particularly dogmatic on the topic. But when people say things like this, I have to admit, it just makes me mad. One doesn’t say this out of a desire for reasoned debate, but out of a desire to propagandize and elevate the emotional aspect of the debate, which is too overheated already in my opinion. It’s a conversation-ender to say that people whose position is basically that we should let people decide what to do with their bodies are little different from those who whipped, raped, and murdered millions of people over several centuries. It betrays a stunning lack of empathy for one, and ultimately an ignorance of the basic ideas of the other side that makes an actual conversation impossible. Even if both sides disagree about when life begins, pro-lifers should at the very least engage enough with pro-choicers to realize that their position isn’t adopted out of malice or depravity (usually) but rather out of a set of liberal principles. There are good pro-choicers and bad ones, just like any other group. As someone who grew up in a conservative area I always try to take pro-lifers at their word, even though I’ve met quite a few whose hatred for abortion was well exceeded by ardor for the death penalty, war, and torture. I know you’re not one of these people, E.D., so I would just implore you to consider all points of view when looking at rhetoric like this. It doesn’t help clarify anything, it just muddies it all up.
You could equally argue that the fetus is holding the pregnant woman hostage.
I don’t know where you got the idea that christianity opposed human slavery for it created and supported it and managed it throughout all of christian Europe and Asia for 1500 years. And when we say that we won our ‘freedom’ in our revolution, we won it by escaping christian managed and controlled serfdom, and every policy and practice of the republican party which fronts for christiaity today leads straight back into that kind of serfdom, and it’s associated ‘divine rights’ dictators. Christianity controlled and bred serfs like agricultural livestock and house pets, and their abortion stance is the last vestige of this control that they have steadily lost and is their lost remenant of their ban on contraception which ensured a constant supply serfs to pump up the wealth of the aristocracy that it protected.
“On religious and particularly on Christian grounds they opposed the institution of slavery.”
wrong. while some christians did in fact oppose slavery, the church was sadly one of its most ardent defenders. the southern baptist convention, one of the loudest opponents of abortion, was established after a split with their brethren over–you guessed it–slavery.
“Even if you are a supporter of abortion, why is this such a troubling comparison?”
well, let’s think: these are the people who want to punish female sexuality by turning them into glorified incubators. these are the same sniveling Vichy-ists who’ve been comparing abortion to the holocaust while backing away in horror whenever anyone takes up arms in resistance. and now they’re comparing me to the racist inbred treasonous slave-owning asshats of the confederacy, all while still ardently condemning the occasional John Brown who had the courage of his convictions.
who could *possibly* find that irritating?
[...] several of Andrew’s readers disagreed with my post on abortion and slavery. And at least one of my readers had some particularly colorful things to [...]
I came across the exact opposite argument before–that opponents of abortion were akin to slavery sympathizers–to which I responded here. In short, I agree with you, Erik. Both the argument for slavery and the argument for abortion fundamentally depend on establishing that blacks and fetuses are non-persons. And both of those arguments are hopelessly flimsy.
Moreover, the second premise of both slavery and abortion are also eerily similar: abolishing slavery would violate an economic or proprietary interest, and criminalizing abortion would violate a constitutionally unarticulated privacy interest. In either case, there is a legitimate interest at stake. But the countervailing right to life is clearly more fundamental.
Are you kidding? Let us grant all the assumptions you list.
A fetus is a person (beyond absurd, renders the word “person” effectively meaningless, but fine).
A person has the right to life… true enough.
Why doesn’t that make it reasonable to call abortion SLAVERY? Well gosh E.D., let me think. I’m a person right? And I have a right to life?
So if I end up in the emergency room tomorrow and my liver is shutting down and I’m dead in a day unless someone donates a bit of their liver to me… and you’re the only compatible donor we can find… if you have the legal right to refuse then that makes me a slave? Can we agree that statement is purely idiotic?
Let’s go a step further… I’m in a car accident tomorrow. I’m bleeding out. The reason I was in a car accident is that some idiot talking on his cell phone swerved into my lane and hit me. I have a rare blood type. Guess who’s a match? Yup… the yapping idiot. Do I, an undisputed person with a right to life, have the right to legally require that the person directly responsible for my predicament undergo the tiny little temporary trivial freaking inconvenience of having a needle prick his arm to give me enough blood to keep me alive until I get to the hospital? No I damn well do not, and for good reason. Their body, their call, no exceptions ever.
There is NO SUCH THING as a “right to life” that over-rides another person’s right to final say over what is done with their body. Under any circumstances. So if I cannot invoke my “right to life” to require someone to do something as inconsequential as donate a little blood then where in the hell do you think we come up with a “right to life” that can require a woman to undergo a nine month pregnancy and the act of giving birth *against her will*? An act that actually WOULD be appropriately referred to as slavery of someone who absolutely certainly is an actual person… the mother.
Legalized abortion is preventing slavery, not instituting it, even granting the anti-abortion camp’s most ridiculous assumptions about personhood for the fetus. The type of “right to life” you are speaking of the fetus being denied does not exist in our society for *anyone*. And I would fight tooth and nail against anyone who attempted to institute such a nightmarish provision in the nation’s legal system.