For Pro-Lifers, A New Day
From Fr. John Jay Hughes, serving in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri
A good entry point for persuading people that abortion is wrong is pointing out the chilling similarities between the arguments for slavery in the 1850s and those used to defend abortion today. Like today’s pro-choice people, slaveholders said they weren’t forcing others to own slaves. They simply pleaded for the right to do what they wanted with their “property.” That word disguised, of course, the fact that human lives were at stake. The question of pro-choice people today, “Doesn’t a woman have a right to do what she wants with her body?” similarly disguises the fact that exercising these so-called rights involves taking a human life.
The slaveholders’ pro-choice argument also lives on today in the bumper stickers that read: “Against abortion? Don’t have one.” Would those who display that sticker display one which said: “Against slavery? Don’t own one”? They’d be ashamed. (For further information about the parallels between pre-Civil War slaveholders and pro-choice people today, see the book by federal judge John T. Noonan, A Private Choice.)
When Americans are as ashamed of abortion as we now are of slavery, the battle will be won.