Writer’s Note: If you don’t stand for something, you can fall for anything. Pretending that moral law can be adjusted based merely on attitudes and feelings of the moment guarantees a train wreck is coming. Roe-Wade is 40-years old and still a prime moral question has not been answered.
During the dark days before the Civil War, slavery was a moral issue that tugged at the heartstrings of both liberals and conservatives. The US Constitution either applied to everyone or it couldn’t apply to anyone based on question of whether blacks were classified as people or property. It was a moral question that even the US Supreme Court failed to correctly dispense when it handed down the infamous Dred Scott decision which has historically can be classified as “the big shame”.http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h88.html
Even President Abraham Lincoln wavered on the slavery issue which troubled abolitionists as Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison. In a move described as purely political for the sake of the survival of the Union, Lincoln declared, “If I could preserve the Union by freeing the slaves, I would. If I could preserve the Union by not freeing the slaves, I would. If I could preserve the Union by freeing some slaves and keeping some in slavery, I would.”
Lincoln’s main interest at the inception of the Civil War was to preserve the Union, not to be a champion for the abolitionists. The bloody carnage even prompted Lincoln to offer a little known compromise to the Confederate states if they would lay down their arms. Lincoln offered the South to keep their slaves for 40-years through 1900 if they would abandon the fight in late 1862. It was an example that Lincoln was more concerned about the preservation of the United States than the issue of slavery.
Once the South rejected the offer, Lincoln delivered upon his promise to the northern abolitionists to free the slaves by his now famous Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. It gave freedom to the slaves everywhere, but it also gave permission to use blacks in the military. Lincoln’s move galvanized the nation and put to rest the ambiguous moral issue that plagued the North on the issue of slavery and the constitutional status of the slaves. Granting this dignity to the slaves did not cost the freedom of others.http://www.nps.gov/ncro/anti/emancipation.html
The unfinished business to the issue of slavery plagues Rove vs Wade in a similar fashion after the troubled ruling in 1972. Roe-Wade addresses the rights of the prospective mother but fails to address the rights of the unborn child. Rarely is the entity of the child being a separate life form acknowledged and seen to be a viable human being apart from the mother.
The moral issue 40-years later in 2013 still trouble those that firmly insist that abortion is a repugnant one sided issue that ignores the rights of both father and child. The decision to terminate another life without the moral consideration of that unborn child is an affront to the right of that child to exist.
The spirit of the law consistent with the United States Constitution is that you are free to do as you please as long as it does not interfere with the rights of another. This long accepted standard is ignored in the test of abortion. Terminating another human being at a whim where there is no medical reason to do so is an abomination then and it still is an abomination now.
The frequency of mass murder should not be the measuring stick of acceptability, neither are other standards of morally unacceptable behavior. Prolific numbers of child abuse do not substantiate its ongoing application. There are many incidents of stealing, theft and robbery, but each demonstration does not diminish the immorality of the practice.
Such is the case with abortion. Just because this practice can be done does not lessen the inhumanity of the act. Our moral outrage is clearly out of order when more concern is given to plants, animals and landscaping than the human life in a womb.
As with slavery, abortion demonstrates no regard to the morality of the one really suffering the consequences.
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