Let Abraham Lincoln address abortion, if you will

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Lincoln’s Logic on Slavery Applied to Abortion
January 22, 2009 | By: John Piper

On January 12, 2009 Samantha Heiges, age 23, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for drowning her newborn in Burnsville, Minnesota. If she had arranged for a doctor to kill the child a few weeks earlier she would be a free woman.

What are the differences between this child before and after birth that would justify it’s protection just after birth but not just before? There are none. This is why Abraham Lincoln’s reasoning about slavery is relevant in ways he could not foresee. He wrote:

You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest; you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you. (“Fragments: On Slavery")
There are no morally relevant differences between white and black or between child-in-the-womb and child-outside-the-womb that would give a right to either to enslave or kill the other.

Comments

Andi said…
I am scared for Obama in that he'll have to answer to God for the lives he's responsible for allowing to be killed in the name of "choice".
There is no difference in a couple of weeks or months. A baby is a baby, even if it still only consists of one cell at conception. And even if it has severe abnormalities.
(P.S. Thanks for sharing what Lincoln said, it's great!)
(P.S.S. I like your sunflower picture!)
January 22, 2009 at 12:08 PM
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