Arguments for Abortion Mimic the Arguments for Slavery Before the Civil War

Both the arguments for slavery in the 1800s and the arguments for abortion rely on a central claim: that a human being is less than human. The dehumanization of black people relied on pseudoscientific claims that they were inferior. The dehumanization of unborn babies relies on claims that they are "just a clump of cells" or part of a woman's body. In both cases, a growing movement of moral clarity demands that the dehumanized be granted a fundamental right long denied them: freedom and life. (Note: I am not saying abortion and slavery are the same, only that the arguments for them are similar.)

Yet the dehumanization is not the only connection between the pro-slavery arguments in 1800s America and the pro-abortion arguments today. In fact, the two movements also championed a form of "choice" that focused on the will of the master and mother over the fundamental rights of the slave and unborn. They also moved away from claims that slavery and abortion are necessary evils to claims that they are a positive good. Black pro-life activists have also condemned the targeting of black women for abortion, condemning abortion as a form of genocide.

Late last month, The New York Times's Amy Harmon wrote a revealing piece about the language in the abortion debate. She summarized the arguments of "abortion rights advocates" who blamed President Bill Clinton for stigmatizing the term "abortion" in the late 1990s with the "safe, legal, and rare" formulation. "Describing abortion as needing to be rare implied incorrectly, in the eyes of advocates, that there was something inherently wrong with having an abortion," Harmon wrote.

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