For too long the evils of abortion have struck society with intolerable blows. People of every race have felt its effects. But as an African American young woman, I am one of the last people many folks expect to hear speaking from a pro-life perspective.
One reason for this is that the media often portrays the pro-life movement in a way that suggests it is made up of a small minority from one segment of society, when in truth the pro-life movement is far more diverse and expansive than that. It incorporates people of all races, ages, and economic stations in life. That is right and necessary because, sadly, abortion is an equal opportunity plague in America. It results in the death of unborn children of every color, whether from white, black, Hispanic, Native American, Indo-European, Asian, Pacific Islander, or other ethnic backgrounds.
My family has been involved for some time with a group called Black Americans for Life, an organization that emphasizes pro-life education and outreach within the black community. This group recognizes that the abortion crisis has a particular resonance for our people for several reasons, from the direct impact of abortion on the black community to the racist history and undercurrents of Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion movement.
As former presidential candidate and Ambassador Alan Keyes once remarked, the history and heritage of black Americans has a special bearing on the crisis of our times, which is epitomized by the abortion issue. According to this conservative black statesman, so-called abortion rights “resurrect the principles of oppression and slavery” that destroyed so many black Americans' ancestors.
Keyes calls abortion a kind of “traffic in human life” that “destroys the dignity of both the aborted child and the woman.” And he notes that “our republic rests on the premise that life and freedom come from God,” so all Americans are called upon to “reject the destructive logic of abortion,” or risk losing that republic. There is no middle ground.
Recently, while doing research for my entry in the National Right to Life Youth Oratory competition, I learned a lot about the history of abortion, including some of the striking parallels between abortion and slavery to which Keyes alluded. One of the things I discovered is that, ever since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, people have been comparing the abortion issue to that of slavery. And putting legalized abortion in the U.S. in that context renders my personal concern with this national evil particularly appropriate.
The Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, which effectively defined blacks as non-persons, was made only three years before Lincoln's presidency and the onset of the Civil War. In an attempt to settle the vexing slavery controversy once and for all, the court concluded that slaves were legally property, not people; therefore, a slave owner could legally buy, sell, or even kill a slave.
Of course abolitionists, many of them Christians, objected to the ruling as immoral and unjust because it discriminated against an entire class of people on the basis of their skin color. But to this, then Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney replied that the rights and freedoms America's founding fathers outlined were never meant to apply to blacks, who in long-established law and practice “were never thought of or spoken of except as property.” Taney's majority opinion gave a whole chorus of moral relativists permission to say, “Listen, you don't have to own a slave if you don't want to. No one is forcing you. But don't force your morality on the slave owner. He has the right to choose to own slaves if he wishes. The Supreme Court says so.”
To many, the Roe v. Wade parallels are obvious. That case too was an attempt to settle a vexing and controversial issue. And just like the Dred Scott decision, Roe v. Wade was enacted with a 7-to-2 majority vote, and ruled that legally the people in question — this time the unborn — were not to be considered people at all. They had no civil rights, no human rights. Unborn babies were thenceforth to be considered the property of the mother, who had the absolute right to choose, either to keep or kill her child.
Pro-life believers reacted much the same as the abolitionists that came before them, calling the ruling immoral and unjust because it discriminated against an entire class of people on the basis of a biological fact beyond their control — not skin color this time, but their unborn status. And to the pro-lifers' moral outcry, Justice Harry Blackmun issued a majority opinion that allowed a whole chorus of “pro-choice” abortion-on-demand proponents to respond in almost the exact same terms used by the pro-slavery crowd years earlier.
Effectively that response is, “You right-to-lifers don't have to have an abortion if you don't want to. No one is forcing you. But don't force your morality on the mother (the 'owner'); she has the right to choose to destroy her developing child if she wishes. It's a constitutional right the Supreme Court has ruled on. Abortion is legal.”
But slavery, too, was legal, up until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was evil, immoral, unjust, and discriminatory, but the law of the land did not condemn it. People of conscience did, guided by the spirit of a righteous God whose word to us has always carried along with its theme of salvation an underlying message of liberation. The abolitionists who knew God also inherently knew that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1) They recognized that those deprived of the very fundamental right of freedom could not truly enjoy any of the rights with which they had been endowed by their Creator, but which had subsequently been stripped by man.
Likewise pro-lifers who know God recognize what should be obvious to the world — that the right to life is the most fundamental right of all. It is the first right the founding fathers mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution, that inspired document that so beautifully articulates the American ideal of freedom. And as the late former President Ronald Reagan said, “…there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.”
We pro-life believers must stand and speak out today for the unborn. We must stand in the shoes of the brave abolitionists of the late 1700s and 1800s, who in their day cried out on behalf of those whose voices society and its justice system chose to ignore. Remember, this time the voiceless ones are not merely being sold into slavery — they are being slaughtered. It is up to us to cry out for the unborn in a society that is trying to silence their first cry before it can be uttered.
The Christian pro-life movement stands today as the underground railroad of our generation, seeking to rescue those who unjustly, tragically, and legally are being killed by the millions. But if we fail to get on board, if we remain silent, how are we different from those of whom scripture says, “They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters … and the land was desecrated by their blood” (Ps 106:38)? We as God's people must stand together to pray, act, and speak out against abortion.
And, finally, I would like to present believers with this spiritual challenge. Just as President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to abolish slavery in our nation, let us pray that another godly American president will soon issue a new proclamation for life — one that recognizes the personhood of every human being from the moment of conception and abolishes abortion in our land forever.
(Danielle Parker is a 16-year-old high school student and right-to-life speaker/activist who lives with her family in Nashville, Tennessee. The aspiring “attorney or maybe actress” was a regional semifinalist in the National Right to Life Youth Oratory Contest and frequently appears in public to address abortion in America or to present her original dramatic monologue, “Harriet Tubman Speaks.” This article courtesy of Agape Press).
