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Abortion, Slavery – Who’s Claiming Ownership Over Human Bodies?
I don’t pay much attention to what Vice President Kamala Harris says because so little of what she says makes sense. So, I’m late to hearing about her speech to an NAACP conference in which she compared restrictions on abortion to historical American slavery.
VP Harris: “We know, NAACP, that our country has a history of claiming ownership over human bodies.” She then referenced “extremists” seeking to criminalize abortion, apparently trying to say that people seeking to restrict abortion are claiming ownership over women’s bodies.
But her reference to abortion and slavery is backward as to who is claiming ownership over human bodies. It is the pro-abortion and “pro-choice” camps that are claiming ownership over a human body. The argument in favor of unrestricted abortion says the mother alone (or sometimes in consultation with others) can decide whether the fetus, a body with human DNA distinct from that of the mother, is her property or is a separate individual — a “baby.” Just as defenders of slavery claimed the slave owner alone should be able to decide whether the slave, a body with human DNA distinct from that of the owner, is his property or is a separate individual — a “person.”
Although I’m late to VP Harris’ comment, I think the counter to her comment is a valuable argument against abortion. The arguments for and against abortion are almost identical to the arguments for and against slavery. Read some of the debates from the first half of the 19th century. The arguments in favor of permitting abortion and in favor of slavery both include giving one person the ability to decide whether another body with unique human DNA is a person or property.
So VP Harris had her analogy backward. Support for abortion is part of a pattern of claiming ownership over human bodies.
Published in Culture
The arguments for abortion are mindless. Fifty years of Roe and it was all hypothetical. Now they have to make their case to the wider public where the talking points are going to have to change.
Margaret Sanger, founder of the Birth Control League and its successor, Planned Parenthood, in a letter to Clarence Gamble, December 10, 1939.
Very good point, but consistency has never been one of the left’s vices.
It shows the contempt for “the Negro population” that is at the core of the movement…and it’s a short step from that to contempt for humanity in general.
In My Way to Peace, Sanger argued for forced sterilization of “morons, mental defectives, (and) epileptics.” See Buck v. Bell, 1927, and note that Carrie Bell wasn’t an imbecile. She only had a child out of wedlock, had average grades and later supported herself through domestic work and married twice. But Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. made it clear,
In Finland, nearly 100 percent of babies diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome are aborted. The US is about 67 percent.
Considering my poor performance in grade school, I probably would have risked the “moron” classification. That would have prevented me from siring a son with an IQ of 148 and a daughter with an IQ of 142. Shove it, Sanger.
I thought that statistically blacks have more abortions per capita than whites. Does she know that she’s advocating for fewer blacks to be born?
Yes, that was my first thought. Abortion on demand essentially says that the fetus is the property of the mother and may be disposed of at will for any reason, using the cruelest methods possible.
Tabby, your error is in making an argument from reason.
The argument these days is based purely on “feelings.” So, don’t confuse us with logic.
Kamala who?
I don’t think that you can turn around the Vice President’s argument and make it work, because the entire argument seems stupid, to me. It’s usually something about “black bodies,” apparently meant to suggest that any law requiring a black person to do anything, or prohibiting a black person from doing anything, or any use of force against a black person, is just like Kunta Kinte being whipped in Roots. It’s not, and it’s a silly argument.
I do think that it’s also meant to suggest rape, in some vague way.
This idea that prohibiting the killing a member of our species while he/she is gestating constitutes a claim of “ownership” over a woman’s body misses something kind of important.
Imagine a woman starts making a quilt, then decides she does not want the quilt, and quits making it. Suppose then the cops arrive and tell her she is required by law to complete the quilt. That would not only be silly. It would be forced labor and unlawful. So what about a woman who gets pregnant? The difference between “quitting” a pregnancy and quitting a quilting project is that quitting a quilting project doesn’t kill anybody. The pro-abortion types twist themselves into knots to avoid acknowledging the reality that abortion means killing. And they will not accept the FACT that the abortion procedure kills one of our species who would otherwise go on to a full life like every one of us.
No matter the buzz phrases and the gainsaying and the gaslighting and the nonsense, it’s just one conversation: when does human life begin? There are only three spots: conception, birth, or some place in between. Those who believe life believes at conception may have a bit of trouble proving that a clump of cells is human, but they in a far better position that those who say life begins at birth (because, duh). The people in the middle are the ones up a crick. When? The day before birth? The day before that? The day before that? It’s completely arbitrary.
And let’s get down to brass tacks, let’s get fuh reals, as the youngsters say. The hard left don’t really care about any of that. For them, it’s not about a clump of cells, or controlling someone’s body, it’s even more fundamental than even that. Ask a simply question, and if you get the honest answer, you know all you need to know. Does human life have intrinsic value, or merely utilitarian value. The hard left believe the latter.
I don’t think so. I think it’s merely an argument for complete bodily autonomy, even if it means killing an innocent. They certainly believe in the intrinsic value of their own lives. It’s just that the baby is so small and invisible and. . . inconvenient.
The question they’ll never answer is: “when is it okay to kill an innocent person?” Because they want to be able to terminate a baby’s life through all nine months of gestation, so long as the mother doesn’t want it. I think they know very well that a new person exists upon conception. It just doesn’t suit their purposes to discuss it.
All true, but any pregnant human person (is that what we can call them, I’m never up to date on these things) can easily get an abortion and someone will pay for it, although one might have to travel a ways to get one in the 9th month..
They don’t, really. They just view themselves as having great utility. They being so smart, you see…