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Santorum Analogy is No Gaffe

By: Curt Levey (Diary)  |  January 20th, 2011 at 01:42 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The most remarkable thing about Rick Santorum’s comparison of abortion and slavery is the mainstream media’s initial reaction treating it as a gaffe. That reaction reflects the intellectual smugness that has made “mainstream media” a bad word in much of America.

The analogy between the slavery debate in the 19th century and the abortion debate in modern times is a solid one because both centered on 1) who to include in the definition of “human,” and 2) whether the ultimate moral decision should be legislated or left to individuals. Despite the similarities, well-meaning people are free to reject the abortion-slavery analogy given that there is no longer any disagreement that slavery was a moral outrage.

However, to refuse to see the similarities and, instead, view the analogy as ignorant is to contemptuously dismiss the half of America that considers abortion to be the taking of a human life and a moral outrage. You don’t have to share the moral judgment of pro-life Americans, but to dismiss their values as unworthy of serious consideration is the very definition of smugness.

Cross-posted at Politico.

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  • chihank

    if universal heathcare with tax funded abortions had been available in the 1960s.

    I just love the snarkiness of the left elites in politico regarding the pro-life message.

    • melbamom

      I agree with Chilhank. The President with the worst “for life” record should, in fact be grateful his mother didn’t abort him! And I don’t understand why people refuse to use their brains and see that Rick Santorum is absolutely correct.
      L.A.M.B.

  • sertelt

    Curt, you’re correct, especially after Santorum issued an update/clarification of his remark:

    http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/20/santorum-makes-contorversial-remark-on-obama-race-and-abortion/

  • editedforbias

    I agree and believe that fostering a free flow of illegal immigrants, to allow for a cheap black market labor force, is not unlike the arguments for slavery in the south’s cotton plantations.

    These arguments have ALWAYS been about freedom and an individuals rights versus the control and desires of the society as a whole. Nothing has really changed in these two parties since the outset.

    Now we add in the management of your health and well being.

    • streiff

      but I don’t think that’s a very good argument.

      Slave labor was not cheap. Slavery survived the advent of industrialization because America, in general, and the South, in particular, did not know how to deal with a large population of free blacks who they had no intent of allowing to have full rights.

      If you look at the history of Washington and Lee in trying to manumit slaves you find manumission was driven as much by economics as humanity. Only about 1/3 of a slave labor force was able to work, the remainder was too young, too old, or too infirm.

      The analogy between slavery and abortion is based on the legal fiction that not all humans are actually human.

      • davesinsanantonio

        used that argument both against the North and within their own ranks because they did not want to speak the truth about the situation. In that regard, they are very analogous to today’s Left who lie about economics and the economic impact of their proposed bills in order to keep one or more segments of the population under their control. They lie about economics, and other things, because they don’t dare tell the truth about their intentions.

  • actuarius

    about the parallels between abortion and slavery. I remember seeing him more than once say that he felt that abortion is the 20th century version of slavery, although I can’t find those Firing Line videos.

    On May 12, 2007 he wrote about Romney’s changes in National Review. In it he compared slavery and abortion again.

    “We need to remind ourselves that deep moral questions have at other times in American history engaged public thought. It is at least strange, but we need to remind ourselves of it, that many years after the founding of the Republic, it simply was not questioned that there existed a class of human beings who were slaves, and that it was a right of an American who bought such a creature at a public auction to direct that slave?s life as one would a mule?s.

    “We all know that slavery eventually became a fissiparous question that finally brought on a civil war. But what lingers in the mind is that perfectly good, kind, intelligent, and well-read people accepted the institution, many without question, for years. If Thomas Jefferson could own slaves, where to find someone of higher sensibilities to rule that slave-ownership was a grievous moral offense? In other situations, with other perspectives, the question lingers. The civil rights debate of the 1960s put forward questions that demanded thoughtful moral consideration.

    “The Democratic party attempted to prohibit thought on the question of abortion when at its convention in 1992 it declined to permit the Democratic governor of the State of Pennsylvania to give a speech?because he opposed abortion, and the managers didn?t want someone on stage who disturbed philosophical equanimity by raising the question of the unborn child.”

    Read the whole article here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/220920/romneys-moral-thought/william-f-buckley-jr

  • http://www.onejerusalem.org Ashbrook

    This week a pro-abort black who served in the New York State Assembly likened the 60% abortion rate among blacks in New York City to genocide.

    A while back Lew Lehrman wrote a thoughtful article on abortion and slavery which Clarence Thomas praised and it was used against him in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

  • gpclaw

    Compare abortion to slavery, the right to vote, separate but equal or what ever other time in our history when we have denied a class or group full legal protection under the law. What it really comes down to is whether or not all people PEOPLE are protected under the constitution.

    I have no issue with the arguments that people of faith make in support of the right to life, but I also realize that most of those who oppose the right to life are not people of faith, so the faith based argument will always fall on deaf ears. On the other hand, by framing the debate around the civil rights/natural rights of unborn humans; opponents of the right to life can no longer try to flip the debate over to one of faith instead of what the debate is really about; denying a group of people the natural right to life and liberty.

    Random thought. We live in a society where killing a dog is treated as murder while killing an unborn baby is considered birth control.

  • jerry39

    Which of course is even more severe than the comparison to slavery – but the phenomenon is simply the de-humanizing of a whole class of people based on some common characteristic which people allow themselves to believe makes the class less than human.

    In the case of abortion, it is simply the characteristic of not being born that purports to justify the genocide. Hence the absurdity of the Dr. Arrested for murder becuase he had to use the scissors on the baby outside of the womb, versus using them inside of the womb.

    It is of course a distinction without a difference as it bears on the question of personhood or humanity – but one of great significance for the blind who can imagine nothing but a mass of disorganized cells or tissue is all that exists inside the womb, somehow magically forming into a baby as it passes through the birth canal.

    But the analogy is a brave one for Republican to make, becuase we so often play along to the extent of minimizing the issue to some minor issue that can be dealt with once we get the imporant issues out of the way, like making sure all the born people are buying enough TVs. It is hard for all but the most staunchly pro-life, to acknowledge these comparisons and then go on to suggest “truces” and the like.

    • aesthete

      No one group is targeting violence at children based on hate; it is mostly a matter of convenience for abortionists which has the end result of depriving the preborn child of his rights. Moreover, government is not mandating abortions, it is merely not criminalizing the taking of someone’s rights. Slavery is the accurate and appropriate analogy in American history.

  • Common_Cents

    to view a collection of fetuses in jars showing chronological development and point to the jar (point in development) that qualifies as life. If you went to the Bodyworlds tour they had such an exhibit. You could not honestly, morally make such a choice past a few days development.

    We let the left hide behind euphemisms and do not force them to make a real choice.

    Secondly, how do we let the left support abortion when the unborn are actually defended in our criminal code. (murder of a pregnant woman can get you two counts.) Doesn’t that imply the unborn has a right to life and constitutional protection? How can the left reconcile this? I’ve asked many times but never got an answer from anyone.

    • lunaticrex

      …that the Fort Hood animal killed 14 humans. Just about every source you look at, even now, reports 13. Seems the MSM have been very successful in keeping this ‘abortion’ from being news (or from adding it to the murder charges for Hasan). Oh, and in case anyone has forgotten, I refer to the pregnant Soldier who was killed in the Deployment Center.

  • jchernic

    Sanger and the rest of her fellow eugenicists believed that abortion was the way to control poor people, mostly those living in the South, and that it was a way to keep down the growth of Negros, most of whom lived in the Southern states. That concept was one of several picked up by the
    Nazis as a prelude to extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and other so-called “unter-menschen” .

    So the slavery concept may or may not be feasible, but the basic political idea re: the black members of this society, was to decrease or eliminate that population through birth control, an idea enamored by most progressives of that time.