The “High Cost of the Loss of Abortion”: Don’t You Know History?

         In the Early years of the 1800’s, the American South had a problem.  There were many Christian Revivals happening around the nation, and people were beginning to realize anew that slavery was evil.  Those in the South saw it more than others; as it was all around them.  But what to do about it?

            At the time, almost all the plantations in the South were mortgaged to the hilt.  The real wealth of the South was held, for the most part, by Northern Wall Street Bankers and Financiers.  The largest asset owned by most everyone in the South was their slaves.  To release them was like asking everyone, right now, to ‘release’ their homes - and walk away.  Sounds great in theory - but who would want to spend the rest of their lives paying for an asset they no longer owned?  Who could afford to?

            State Houses across the South spent year after year trying to come up with solutions to this problem.  That is, until Abolitionists in the North started saying that all Southerners were evil and should be murdered in their beds.  Something about that began hardening the hearts of Southerners.  Indeed, it seemed to them that perhaps these Northerners (who seemed to have forgotten that THEY had just gotten rid of slavery a few short years earlier by ‘solving’ the problem with immigrants - who they treated like slaves) were not quite the ‘friendly countrymen’ the South had always considered?

            Even so, it was widely accepted that, without slaves, the South would be in financial ruin.  People would starve, children would be orphaned - the whole 9 yards.  It was a real quandary.

            But that didn’t matter.  The North had decided that NO price was too steep for the freedom of men.  NO one’s life should be in the hands of another; NO one should be able to say if another should live or die; should marry or not; should live as they wish - or not.  If the South had to be ruined to set lives free - then so be it.

            And so it was.

            After the Civil War, it was 60 years before Virginia could afford to rebuild the bridges destroyed during it.  And Virginia was one of the ‘wealthier’ states…

            Sixty years.

            An entire generation grew up, and many died, before being able to cross rivers again via bridges - the South was simply too poor to build them.  And many did starve in the south - both white; and black.  In fact, this is what led to the great rage and long simmering hatred toward blacks in the south - they were the only ones left to blame.  The Northerners had long since gone on with their lives; and forgotten about them.  Entire generations had grown up in the South in abject poverty after the war to ‘set men free’ - with no one to blame but blacks and their ‘freedom’.

            Yet does anyone today argue for slavery again? Anyone think the price was just “too high”?

            Of course not; because slavery was, and still is, evil.  Treating another human life as disposable for YOUR purposes - always is.

            Like Abortion.

            Abortion is the closest thing in the world today to slavery; and it is actually shocking that a nation that killed over half a million people in the Civil War battle for freedom - should have taken away the freedom to live for millions of others - just 100 years later.  For what is the argument for abortion?  That a woman’s body, much like a southern planation, is hers alone - and that a woman, much like a plantation owner, has the right to do with the life (lives) on / in it that she/he sees fit.

            If she ‘chooses’ to let another live; so be it.  But if she chooses not to - oh well.  Not much anyone else should be able to do to help that innocent life - just like the Southern plantation owners argued 160 years ago.

            And guess what?  We didn’t buy that argument then; why in the world should we buy it now?

            Yes, there may well be a cost to freedom.  But we have decided before; and we are deciding again; that no cost is TOO GREAT - for freedom.  No cost is too great to save a human life.  ALL human lives should have the freedom TO live; and to determine the best destiny they can muster.  No one else gets to choose; no one else gets to kill.

            I hear that there will be ‘real hardship’ for women without abortion.  Think it was a cakewalk for the South without slaves?  Hardly.  Yet this is why kidnapping is such a lucrative crime.  People will pay ANY cost for a human life.  Because NO cost is greater than LIFE.  

            We know this.

            We should not be surprised to expect it now.