On Comparing Abortion to Slavery
I remember sometime in the mid 90s being handed a chart that aimed to show similarities between slavery and abortion. I thought it kind of interesting as a comparison, but I don’t recall ever finding it helpful for really understanding the abortion issue or for making a persuasive argument for outlawing abortion. You find slavery morally repugnant, the chart seemed to say, well, abortion is a lot like slavery, so you should find it immoral as well. I don’t know of anyone who was convinced by this line of reasoning, though I do know the points of alleged similarity have been met with criticism and debunking. Rick Santorum’s recent use of the comparison offers a case in point. I’m fairly close to E.D. Kain’s position on the analogy. I understand why it’s used, but I don’t see that it benefits the discussion—of either topic.
Speaking of the slavery analogy, I debated a fellow pro-lifer over the Internet yesterday whose theoretical solution to the legality of abortion was the use of raw power to outlaw it and, if needed, a civil war to settle the matter. A civil war was fought to end slavery, so why not to end abortion? I say theoretical as this person didn’t really wish to start organized acts of violence in the defense of life; still, he thought a civil war might be the only real way of putting a stop to abortion in this country. Suffice it to say that I found his position both puzzling and frightening. It illustrates one place thought can be lead by comparing abortion to slavery.
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The main point is that in both cases the person is determined to be less than fully human and so the is no reason to give them their rights as a human. Do pro-lifers advocate violence in defense of life. No. We do want others to understand that dehumanizing the unborn has a very detrimental effect on society. After all if we can deny their humanity, we can do it for anyone.
Well, but I think we DO advocate violence in the defense of life. Just not private/vigilante violence.
But certainly we want the State to use the fullness of its policing powers (including physical force if necessary) to protect the unborn who are being attacked. Just as we’d want them to come save us in the case of an attempted murder of an adult. If you can’t call 911 to bring in forces to save you or someone you know whom is under violent attack…then what good is the State?
I’m not even talking about punishment after-the-fact here for doctor and accomplices, which is another more sensitive issue. I’m talking about police being empowered/mandated to stop abortions before they happen or while they’re in progress, and saving babies BEFORE they get killed.
And I’d even argue that if a private individual was IN THE ROOM while an abortion was IN PROGRESS, they’d have no other option but to try to stop it. Especially if it was something like a partial-birth abortion where they could easily disable the doctor and successfully birth the baby ALIVE right then and carry it to safety.
(Of course, that’s mainly hypothetical. Who of us is going to be in the room like that? And there is no obligation to SEEK OUT evil in order to stop it, especially when it is imprudent for the cause as a whole).
And, if Roe v Wade and its progeny were overturned tomorrow, there would not be a 50-state ban on abortion. At best, a few states would then be likely to adopt some ban on abortion, and I realistically can’t see a single US state adopting the Catholic view on abortion (i.e, there would be exceptions for rape and incest and mother’s life). And, it should be remembered, that the pre-Roe anti-abortion codes were directed at providers, not mothers.
There is not a single justice on the SCOTUS – including the 5 Catholics – who has ever adopted the Catholic view on abortion; rather, the anti-Roe justices are, to a person, positivists who merely believe that Roe was not properly founded on the Constitutional text – none of them see a constitutional right to life for fetuses.
So, what’s the civil war for? To overturn Roe or to adopt a position on abortion that never obtained in this country even before Roe?
“the anti-Roe justices are, to a person, positivists who merely believe that Roe was not properly founded on the Constitutional text – none of them see a constitutional right to life for fetuses.”
I disagree. I think Scalia, for example, WOULD try to argue that the 14th amendment guaranteed a right to life for even the unborn, for example, he just knows that such a position would (in the current political climate) cause a constitutional crisis that would make the Supreme Court lose its power (which is really just a bone thrown to them as long as they don’t rock the boat TOO much; they have no troops to enforce their decisions except what the legislative and executive gives them) or cause the passing of an amendment specifically allowing abortion.
The problem with analogies in general is that there can, by definition, be no such thing as a perfect analogy. The holocaust is one thing, slavery another and abortion another. Each occurs in its own historical circumstance with the attendant legal and social justifications.
What is important when using analogy is to identify what in the two admittedly different things is being compared and what is not. So, to say that in any number of historic evils (salvery, holocaust, denying women or racial minorities the vote, etc.) an aspect of the evil was a denial of personhood seems to me a very fair thing to say.
To conclude from this one pertinent similarity that the “solution” of war that was “necessary” to end slavery or the holocaust could be legitimately used in the current debates about abortion is to extrapolate in an irresponsible way from one analagous aspect. Things are far more complicated than that.
Well said, Brett. I would add also that the other pertinent aspect of the analogy is the similarity of legal status of the slave and the unborn. It seems to me that the point of the analogy is to highlight the untenable position that personhood, and therefore legal recognition as having certain inalienable rights, is based on some accidental quality a human being displays. Remember that “person” has always had a legal significance, all the way back to Roman law, prior to gaining more theological significance in the later Trinitarian and Christological controversies.
Go read Ta-Nahesi Coats post at the Atlantic Monthly blog. It’s from Sunday, I believe. I can’t seem to make this blog accept a link, but it’s definitely worth reading.
I’d read Coates’ piece the other day and was mulling over where to write in response to it — it seems to me that Kain does a pretty good job.
I’m a bit curious about your second paragraph, though.
Certainly, I think it’s a bit ignorant and scary for someone to go around actively wishing for another civil war. After all, the civil war was one of the less fun things that our country has done in its history.
And, of course, there’s always the argument that without the Civil War, slavery would have died off eventually. Clearly, it wasn’t going to do so any time soon. It was booming and producing most of the exports for the US. However in another 30 of 50 or 80 years, surely it would have changed or died out. Maybe by 1900 or so it would have morphed into some kind of apartheid and by the 70s or 80s that apartheid would have been overthrown — leaving the US a healthy, triving and internationally respected democracy like South Africa.
But allowing for that, would we necessarily say that the Civil War was thus not worth it? Isn’t there a sense in which the crucible of suffering that was the Civil War was good for us as a country as a purgation of slavery — even acknowledging at the same time that it took another 100 years for anything like racial justice to be achieved?
Certainly, people are too eager to use “raw power” to achieve one end or another. But in the end, we as a civic entity use “raw power” to enforce a number of laws on unwilling lawbreakers on everything ranging from wife beating and child abuse to homicide and cannibalism. Rather than waiting for a universal consensus against these sorts of actions to spring up, our society has achieved a majority willing to outlaw them and then used state-approved coercion and violence to enforce these laws on those who still don’t obey them. If we seriously think that abortion is a heinous moral act, isn’t it fairly reasonable to want to pursue a similar course in regard to it?
If anything, slavery is a bad example because it is the only case in our history in which the outlawing some offense against human dignity resulted in a civil war. (As Coates points out, in part because it was such big business.)
But surely, at a basic level, if it is possible to achieve consensus to outlaw some serious injustice (a point we’re obviously not at yet with abortion — though as pro-lifers we obviously work constantly in this direction) is it not right to do so? And if there is some minority within the country eager to start a civil war over their objection to the outlawing of some injustice (or in the case of the historical Civil War, the mere prospect that it may be restricted) is that necessarily something which should hold us back from doing the right thing?
I doubt very much that we’d ever see a universal consensus on the abortion issue, one way or another. I hope we’ll see what may be called a practical consensus–a consensus that’s sufficient enough to keep laws protecting the unborn on the books. I wouldn’t call this “raw power,” though, certainly not in the way I meant it in reference to my debate opponent. His solution, as I understood it, implied a whole political shift away from democracy.
I don’t think we’ll ever have a universal consensus on abortion either — but we’ve banned or severely restricted a lot of activities against which there was only a majority or plurality consensus.
True, and I don’t necessarily have a problem with that.
On the other hand, the political and social struggle to end slavery employed a variety of means. No Catholic was excommunicated or otherwise denied the sacraments over their policy positions or voting. Some want immediate abolition, other gradual. Some wanted repatriation to Liberia. Some wanted to contain it to the states that permitted it. Some wanted to form a new political party and others wanted to work within the existing parties. And some (mainly German and Irish Catholics along with a one term member of Congress from Illinois) criticized the Know-Nothing dominated abolitionist movement for “standing for the equality of the negro while denying the equality of all whites.”
As I’ve said previously, being ignorant of the civil rights movement is a great aid in analogizing it with the struggle to end abortion. While I don’t consider myself exactly qualified to be discussing the civil rights movement, I know enough to recognize that most of the arguments marshaled in the analogy are garbage. Matters aren’t helped that I’m not persuaded that the Civil War was an undeniably good thing in the effort to end slavery. No other country required a civil war to end slavery. Folks take it as a mark of honor that we had one rather than seeing it as a scar that reflected our country’s intransigence. Matters also aren’t helped that the Civil War clearly does not demarcate where the US went from treating black people as a race unjustly to treating them justly.
No other country required a civil war to end slavery.
That’s an important point.
Well, it’s an important point, but I’m not sure it goes the way of showing the Civil War was unnecessary. The US economy was more dependent on slavery than any other major nation’s. There were some Caribean possessions which had larger percentages of the economy based on slavery than, but they were much smaller economies and either ended slavery when the colonial pow ended it, or ended it throu violent revolution.
One can argue that slavery would have ended naturally at some point without a civil war, but it’s not at all clear when — especially given that Southern power brokers like Jefferson Davis had, before the war, wanted to massively expand the US into Central and South America — adding all the new territory as a slave economy empire.
Coates’ post in the Atlantic (as well as a lot of his other writing on the Civil War and slavery) is actually vey good on this topic.
M.Z. once again demonstrates VN’s civility in internet discourse as compared to conservatives, by calling pro-lifers ignorant of the civil rights movement and their arguments garbage. How absurd to paint so many pro-life leaders who themselves marched with King as ignoramouses.
The comparison of abortion to slavery is not only legitimate, but insightful on many levels even if it is an analogy. The Lincoln-Douglas debates are cut-and-paste pro-life, pro-choice argument outlines. Dred Scott and Roe are carbon copies. The massiveness and social entrenchedness of the evil, the gravity of it, the dehumanization of it, are eerily parallel. The parallels with the civil rights movement in its breadth and nonviolence are thorough. Both evils’ common roots in the American experience entwine the two struggles. And at core, the issue is whether the human community will be welcoming and expansive or narrowing and oppressive. It would be ignorance of history not to draw this parallel.
Matt,
Do you think the comparison serves the pro-life movement well in its efforts?
Debate would be better facilitated if you weren’t perpetually offended.
Calling the argument ignorant is not a slander. The purpose of arguments is to persuade. In this case, the purpose is to positively associate the cause of ending abortion with the cause to end slavery. Where many blacks find the argument bad and even offensive is the idea that this is something white people did for them. #1, black people were instrumental in the process, and #2 the expectation is that black people are supposed to be grateful or something that white people stopped enslaving them. A bunch of white people killing themselves so that black people no longer had to suffer slavery is not how black people in this country view their history or the history around ending slavery.
This brings us to the other contingent attempting to be persuaded, white folks. History is written by the winners. The idea that white people faced a choice to be for slavery or against it is the propaganda of the winners. The idea that whites were grossly concerned over justice to black people is belied by the 100 years of history after the Civil War. The idea that incremental solutions were rejected or not considered because people decided they had to stand on absolute principle simply doesn’t appreciate the history of the period.
I have no problem with Matt’s second paragraph.
As to the statement in the first about the many pro-life leaders who themselves marched with Dr. King, would Matt be willing to start listing them?
I don’t say that because I think there are none such people. I say it because it would really help bring back my faith in the pro-life movement to read of Matt affirming the pro-life leadership of Sargent Shriver and the other seamless garment types who march with Dr. King. At times, I’ve hadn the impression such types are not welcome in pro-leadership roles.
Matt?
I’ll leave Matt to back up his claim if he can — I don’t have knowledge of it one way or the other — but I would just point out that having marched with Dr. King is not necessarily of being the sort of person you would support politically.
For instance, Charleton Heston marched with King and opposed abortion — but he’s not exactly a left wing hero.
I hope Matt can and will back up his campaign.
I’m well aware that some who were active liberals on civil rights issues eventually took a different path, including many of the founders of neo-conservatism. And, in fact, that has for me been part of the basis of warm relationships with many neo-conservative followers of Dr. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, and Ben Wattenburg (who once endorsed me in an election for Democratic committeeman).
So I am thinking that some of these “many pro-life leaders who marched with King” mentioned by Matt could help form the basis of similar warm relationships, just has been done with neo-cons. So I am just waiting for Matt to name them.
Can’t presume to speak for Matt, but it sounds like we share similar sensibilities.
I am prolife of the seamless garment flavor…although, unlike Matt and to my everlasting shame, I am often closetedly so within my overwhelmingly anti-anti-abortion circle. As a college student in Memphis in Memphis in 1968 I marched with Martin Luther King. And in the Bernardin era I was in leadership for a seamless garment-themed outreach called Peaceful Solutions. PS organized around the resolutely non-political objective of supporting non-violent alternatives to the broad range of consistent life issues.
Was there a consistent ethic constituency that marched with King? Not self-consciously so. Remember: 1968 was pre-Roe and pre-Seamless Garment. But, yes: I think that many march participants would have resonated with prolife sensibilities at that time, Jesse Jackson among them. Coleman McCarthy, eulogist to Sargent Shriver, was an eloquent spokesperson for that era’s sensibilities. Here’s what he wrote for the Washington Post in 1992 before he was fired:
“The kinship between militarism and abortion is strongest in the common seductiveness of the rationalizations that both depend on. Gen. Schwarzkopf does not say he is pro-war. He is for peace through strength. Field-commander Ireland is not pro- abortion. She is for choice. Left out of the discussion is the calculated taking of life, as if those who advocate a right to an abortion or a right to wage war are exempt from an accountability of violence. Against Iraq, American generals promoted themselves as winners. Against the Supreme Court, abortion strategists pledge a winning campaign. The losers — the destroyed civilians in Iraq, the destroyed fetal life in abortion clinics — are forgotten as unseen casualties.”
Like all analogies there are similarities and dissimilarities between abortion and slavery. I am agnostic on the capacity of this comparison to persuade but I can certainly understand why it is controversial. All movements want to create and define their narratives and claim linkages with other successful movements. It should be obvious why anti-abortion advocates would want to embrace this connection and for anti-anti-abortion advocates to deconstruct it.
Peaceful Solutions, in the last analysis, was a failed vision. The conventional wisdom holds that the hostility of Catholic prolifers doomed such seamless garment initiatives. Quite so…but that’s only half of the story. In fact, many Catholic progressives were profoundly disinterested, even embarrassed, at any association between their project and opposition to abortion. They devoted far more energy to distancing themselves from prolifers than to seeking common cause. Let there be no doubt: being out and proud as prolife is as dicey a stance in many progressive Catholic settings as is being prochoice in comparable conservative Catholic settings.
M.Z. alludes to a certain touchiness on Matt’s behalf. I can’t know if that is true but if it were I would get it. The most grotesque characterizations of prolifers get a pass in settings where one dare not burlesque virtually any other demographic. It becomes tiresome to know that people you respect are routinely portrayed by other people you respect in the most unattractive light. I know the standard VN reply: “We *are* prolife and are critiquing the movement from the inside.” But that falls flat when one observes the often hostile treatment accorded to correspondents with prolife movement sympathies and the generally neutral and sometimes cordial treatment our prominent prochoice correspondents receive.
So, yea, those who are prolife and don’t buy into the dominant ‘prolife hypocrisy’ trope are touchy and defensive. “Prolife hypocrisy” has been the portal for many of my friends to travel the one-way path from prolife to ambivalent to anti-anti-abortion to reluctantly prochoice to comfortably prochoice. But then we’ve all been wounded, haven’t we? And we’re often more attentive to the wounds borne than the wounds inflicted. Perhaps we should all heed the words of our president to “to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
The seamless garment. on the rare occasions when it gets play these days, serves as a cudgel between two contending camps. On the one side are those for whom abortion is the preeminent, perhaps the only important issue. Their opposition to the formulation is unyielding because it seems to deemphasize the cause to which they have devoted their lives. On the other side are those for whom abortion advocacy is bogus and failure to ascribe to the full garment is evidence of prolife hypocrisy. If the genuine garment receives enthusiastic support anywhere these days it certainly has escaped my attention. The one prominent exception: Charlie Camosy’s No Hidden Magenta: http://nohiddenmagenta.wordpress.com/
Yes, Matt continually plays the I’m offended card to avoid actual argumentation. That criticism isn’t particular to the pro-life movement.
As for characterizing those that use the analogy of doing so largely ignorantly, I have no problem doing so. This doesn’t make the pro-life movement bad. It is simply a bad argument. Causes are filled with good and bad arguments. I didn’t offer a hypocrisy argument, so I really don’t understand your point in going there. I tend to avoid hypocrisy arguments myself.
M.Z.: No claim was made that *you* use the ‘prolife hypocrisy’ argument. I do think that it makes it makes regular and often unwarranted appearances at Vox Nova.
The argument drawing an analogy between abortion and slavery is an old one. I first saw it in a movie shown by a local K of C council in Chicago in 1985 or 86.
I have always been dubious about its value as a persuasive argument because analogies are slippery things. In philosophical discussions they are extremely powerful tools, but require subtlety and nuance. In public debate, those tend to get washed out and you get rhetorical statements that boil down to “Abortion = slavery.”
Also, there is a piece of the analogy that can be used against the pro-life movement: a small but militant faction of the anti-slavery movement was willing to use any means necessary to achieve its ends, up to and including violence and murder. Think of bloody Kansas, the raid on Harper’s Ferry, the apologists for the Turner rebellion. Time and selective memory have given those a certain patina of respectability—not completely respectable, but not something we get worked up about. Think how easily this could be used to tar the pro-life movement if you want to push this analogy to the obvious limit.
Kyle writes, “Suffice it to say that I found his position both puzzling and frightening. It illustrates one place thought can be lead by comparing abortion to slavery.”
It’s hard for me to find that thought more frightening than the reality of a million babies murdered every year.
I was at an awards banquet on Saturday with all the evil pro-life extremists that are the target of so much criticism from bloggers at VN and Commonweal and the like. They gave an award and a large prize to Alveda King, who presented a speech about the civil rights movement that the pro-life movement is. On the stage strongly cheering Alveda on was her mother Naomi, the widow of A.D. King. Among the diverse array of influential pro-life leaders who came out of the civil rights movement also include Joe Scheidler and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Not that that fact will prevent them and their pro-life efforts from being villified here.
FWIW, I am pro-life, but I think that the movement is run badly. I also think that the majority of black civil rights organizations are run badly, although I support their goals.
Yes, I remember Pastor Neuhaus back when he was a liberal. And I think that has made him a more helpful voice. I don’t know anything about Scheidler nor recognize his name as someone active on civil rights issues.
Did the late Fr. Neuhaus and Scheidler march with Dr. King? Are they it for the “many pro-life leaders” who marched with Dr. King?
Yes they did march with King. That you don’t know Scheidler as a pro-life leader is a deficiency that I would recommend you cure. And I also mentioned pro-life leader Alveda King, who not only marched with King but IS a King. These are just off the top of my head. The charge was that prolife leaders are ignorant of the civil rights movement, and that the connection to the two movements is “garbage”. I have disproven it rather speedily. Now that I have offered evidence, where is the evidence to the contrary? Anyone here can feel free to offer something–anything.
I’m not finding any record of any of the three of them marching with Dr. King, although Neuhaus had a friendship with King.
But my point is not to dispute that many who marched with Dr. King in support of his liberal agenda are pro-life. I’m trying to get a recognition that Dr. King’s liberalism is not at odds and even welcome in the pro-life movement.
Thank you for clarifying that no evidence has been offered to counter mine.
On your distinct point, I am glad to personally affirm that someone’s liberalism is not at odds and is welcome in the pro-life movement, provided of course that such “liberalism” or any ism does not itself contain premises or actions that violate pro-life principle, which basically is that preborn children are little boys and girls, killing them is always wrong and must be illegal. There may be disputes about whether a particular idea or activity undermines pro-life principle or not; but that’s not a rejection of “liberalism” writ large. There may also be pro-life conservatives who reject liberalism writ large, but that doesn’t mean pro-life leaders, even conservative ones, don’t generally welcome them into the movement. Bob Casey Sr. was welcomed into the movement, but to the extent his son isn’t, it’s directly proportionate to anti-pro-life things he does, not because “he’s a liberal.” Kathleen Sebelius and Nancy Pelosi aren’t criticized by the pro-life movement becasue “she’s a liberal”; they’re criticized because they promote pro-abortion policies and attack pro-life ones. Promoting Obama isn’t rejected by the pro-life movement because he’s a liberal–it’s rejected because he does and advocates so many pro-abortion actions. Democrats are not targeted by pro-lifers becasue they are liberals, they (and Republicans) are targeted if they do pro-abortion things, and welcomed if they do pro-life things. If you define liberal to mean doing things that the pro-life movement considers pro-abortion, like Obama’s agenda, then of course THAT is not welcomed by the pro-life movement, but not because it’s liberal. Chris Smith does lots of “liberal” things and is presently the Congressional LEADER of the pro-life movement.
Bob Casey Sr. was welcomed into the movement,
Gov. Bob Casey, Sr. put into regulation (with the text reviewed and approved by PA RTL) a prohibition on Commonwealth financing of abortions. When Pennsylvania pulled that language off the shelf to write into their high risk health insurance plan, the RTL movement didn’t say “Gee, taking a second look at this, we think it could be tightened up.”
Instead, before there was even final federal approval of the plan, they launched a political assult on the President and on health care reform.
Politics first, principle second.
To be technical, I don’t think that Fr. Neuhaus and Dr. King were friends. As someone who has been through almost all of the King papers stored at the King Center, Fr. Neuhaus’ name only showed up once (on a program as a participant in the deliciously titled “Liturgy and Revolution” conference). Similarly, I also did a search for Neuhaus’ name in the Online King Records Access (which is a master index of almost every single written document King wrote or received from childhood to death) and didn’t get any hits. Thus, I’m inclined to believe that King was acquainted with Neuhaus in the way that he was with many young activists, but they weren’t close. Granted, that’s more than any of us can say, but it should be kept in perspective.
To me, the question is not whether the comparison is apt, but is it effective. Chances are, when the average American hears abortion being compared to slavery, they probably write it off as hyperbole. To me, such a comparison is an attempt to make the pro-life movement the moral equivalent of the Civil Rights Movement, without any knowledge of what the latter was actually about. In the 1950s, getting involved with Civil Rights was a life or death decision. You could be investigated by the FBI, lose your job, have your house bombed, be accused of communism, or lynched by local toughs. It wasn’t the kind of weekend activism that runs the modern pro-life movement. Being pro-life may not be popular in many places, but there’s no risk of life and limb as their was in the Civil Rights Movement.
The fact of the matter is that no one really cares about abortion, aside from a hard-core cadre of professional pro-lifers and pro-choicers. The top issues in the last couple of elections have been the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spending. Abortion wasn’t didn’t even make the top ten. Race has been an issue in America, since the 1600s, whereas abortion only really become a public concern in the late 1960s.
Yes Kyle I think the comparison does serve the pro-life movement well. Not just because it is true, but because of the so many ways in which it is true. I didn’t even mention other factors, such as the fact that the abortion movement is itself rooted in the eugenics ideology that justified slavery and segregation. It’s not just similar–it has the same founders. The abortion industry is literally an extension of the minority extermination project of those thinkers. I do agree that it does help if this message comes from African American pro-lifers. Even then, it will be attacked, so the fact that a message is attacked is not proof that it is not working. But check out the work of Ryan Bomberger such as at TooManyAborted.com and his Radiance Foundation.
To hear Ryan, and another African American pro-life leader, talk about issues related to this, go to the 36 minute 45 second mark of the following video, of a conference held Monday morning this week. http://www.frc.org/prolifecon
The analogy may or may not be effective as a means of persuasion, but there is a real analogy that can be extended to other areas.
The Dred Scott decision ruled that an arbitrary class of homo sapiens. African Americans, are not “persons“ in the meaning of the Constitution and thus could be held as slaves, bought and sold, etc. In Roe vs. Wade that an arbitrary class of homo sapiens, those still in the womb, are not persons in the meaning of the constitution and could be killed at discretion.
An limited anology in a specific field. But if any politically inconvenient arbitrary class of homo sapiens can be declared to not be persons in the meaning of the Constitution, then any other politically inconvenient arbitrary class of homo sapiens can be declared to not be persons in the meaning of the Constitution. You have rights as long as you are part of an approved group but they go away if the group becomes unapproved.
I’m not a historian, but I seem to remember reading Neuhaus saying that the Civil Rights leaders and proponents back in that day tended to be pro-life because civil rights issues and the idea of freedom fit naturally with the anti-abortion idea of a “right to life”. But all of a sudden, there was a bizarre political shift where civil rights concerns came to be identified with abortion rights. If I recall correctly. Neuhaus thought that was an illogical shift.
So I pulled up Jesse Jackson’s wikipedia article, and sure enough, back in the day, he held anti-abortion views. And even more interesting, Jesse Jackson himself used the slavery-abortion analogy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson
(FWIW, I think the slavery-abortion analogy is useful, considering the arguments in favor of abortion rights are so similar to those in favor of slavery – and are morally deficient for similar reasons.)
That A may have been useful in seeking B does not imply that B is useful in seeking A. Additionally, anecdote isn’t data. Were this decades old argument persuasive we’d not see 90+% affinity for the Democratic Party among blacks.
This isn’t that difficult to understand. Blacks likewise do not see a useful analogy between the civil rights movement and gay rights. At lot of it has to do with blacks not adopting the narrative of the benevolent white man for the reason of ending black oppression.
Not sure what A and B is. And I wasn’t trying to make a persuasive argument from data. Just making a couple observations, which I thought were interesting.
It’s imperfect and it is not universally recognized. But there does seem to be a case for a linkage (or seemless garment, if you will) between Dr. Kings message of Job, Peace and Justice and the protection of the unborn. Linking the defense of the unborn to the traditional liberal agenda has not been well received on the Left, outside of Catholic circles, and certainly the upper echelons of the RTL movement spend their time in cahoots with those who never supported Dr.King’s agenda.
Those of us who see a linkage seem to be a lonely community.
What Kurt said.
Lonely…and shrinking. Sargent Shriver R.I.P.
Amen, Mike. Amen.