OPINION:
On a recent CNN segment, former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum pointed out the hypocrisy of the left condemning our country’s history of racism while still supporting abortion today.
Mr. Santorum critiqued Bakari Sellers’ claim that “there is nothing the same about slavery and abortion.”
Bakari Sellers is wrong and Rick Santorum is right. There is a lot in common between slavery and abortion, namely that for society to justify either, the victims must be dehumanized.
Slave owners treated slaves as property. Abortionists treat human children as “just a clump of cells.” In both cases, human beings, created in the image of God and bestowed with unalienable rights, are reduced in stature for a society to justify their horrendous treatment.
On the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1860, Albert Brown, a Democrat from Mississippi, proclaimed, “Mr. President, it seems to me that northern Senators most pertinaciously overlook the main point at issue between the two sections of our Confederacy. We claim that there is property in slaves, and they deny it.”
In a recent ACLU blog post titled “What’s Wrong With Fetal Rights,” an organization charged with protecting civil liberties argues against “the notion that the fetus has legal rights independent of the woman carrying it in her womb.”
Three-hundred-thirty-eight-thousand slaves were transported directly from Africa to North America between 1525 and 1866. This population grew to 4.4 million by 1860 because of natural increase. Between 1882 and 1968, 4,743 people were lynched in America, a vast majority being Black.
Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, more than 60 million abortions have taken place in America. In 2017, 862,320 abortions were performed. That means in one year, Americans murdered two times more children via abortion than slaves directly imported from Africa in 341 years. Per day, America averages 2,362 abortions. This means that in just three days, Americans murdered more children via abortion than all Americans lynched in 86 years.
Because of America’s original sin of slavery, people’s worth was decided by the color of their skin. Because of America’s present sin of abortion, people’s worth is decided by their gestation age. In both cases, those with power are determining the worth of others. In reality, all our worth is the same because we are created in the image of God. No matter your skin color or gestation age, people have infinite worth because God says so.
If you attend the March for Life in Washington, D.C., you will see tens of thousands of young people standing up for the right to life and against the scourge of abortion. Attitudes are changing on abortion, and young people are becoming more pro-life. This is in part because younger generations see their siblings’ sonogram picture taped to the refrigerator door. They are rejecting the lie that their brother or sister was “just a clump of cells.”
Today’s liberals are making the same mistake as Confederate leaders: dehumanizing fellow human beings to make the ends justify the means. This won’t last forever. The lie is discovered and condemned. Liberals care a lot about “being on the right side of history.” Similar to our society’s disdain for racists, slaveholders and bigots, the statues of abortion-supporting liberals will eventually come toppling down.
• Jeff Hunt is the director of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University and the chairman of the Western Conservative Summit. His views do not necessary reflect the views of Colorado Christian University.
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