What Slavery Teaches About Elective Abortion

Martin Luther King Day reminds us of a similarity between the practices of slavery and of elective abortion. Just as cheap slave labor enriches a slaveholding society, so eliminating the need to care for some children enriches a society that permits elective abortion. But neither practice is morally good, and both should be eliminated from societies that value peace and freedom.

Abortion advocates have long argued that the wealthy, the middle class and the poor need this legal ability. When Abortion Was A Crime, a history of pre-Roe America that supports this pro-choice argument, tells how abortion benefitted wealthy women who did not want children and middle class women whose families were struggling to maintain and improve their financial security. The book also tells tragic stories of women in poverty who had no hope of providing the basic necessities for the children they already had, let alone another. With all these stories as evidence, When Abortion Was A Crime argues that elective abortion benefits all social classes.

It will only become increasingly clear that elective abortion is an unjust solution to the problem of economic opportunity, just as slavery was. On the one hand, some pregnant women and their families suffer economic hardship while others strive to provide greater opportunities for the children that they have. On the other hand, humanity has long recognized in law and culture that the baby who emerges at birth is already as human as the older members of the family. With greater and greater evidence, science traces the beginning of a baby’s existence back to the process of conception. The practice of elective abortion is an unjust solution because it allows some people to deliberately, though sometimes with regret, deprive some children of life for the economic well being of others.

Finding a just solution requires grappling with both sides of the problem. It does not take a religious outlook to grapple with them, but it is no surprise that religious people like Martin Luther King, a Christian pastor, have helped lead the thinking and movements that do. In his speech to honor the centennial of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, MLK observed that the practice and legacy of slavery gave black Americans a false sense of inferiority and white Americans a false sense of superiority, argued that the conversion of soul is even more important than legal changes to end that legacy, and articulated the ideals and virtues to guide that conversion.

It does not require a religious view, but religious people will also spot the false narratives of woman versus child that justify elective abortion. More importantly, they will seek and implement practices that care for the social and medical well-being of both mother and child. Among the leaders will be religiously-inspired doctors who have already been practicing medicine without performing elective abortions and who know how to protect both mother and child from life-threatening complications during labor and delivery, avoiding termination of pregnancy when possible.

With MLK, Abraham Lincoln and the American Founders, these doctors recognize that all people are created equal and given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, from the moment their lives begin.