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Abortion has a parallel with American slavery: both contradict the principles of the Declaration of Independence and invite the wrath of a just God.
Frederick Douglass warned that once American principles are abandoned, "all is lost." But there is hope: the end of slavery proves that we can and must work to uproot injustice and finally bring about equal protection for all—without delay. Read: |
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"I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes and at whatever cost."
— Frederick Douglass, "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?", July 5, 1852 Download large version |
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"Qui in utero est pro jam nato habetur, quoties de ejus commodo quaeritur." "He who is in the womb is held as already born, whenever a question arises for his benefit.” — Black's Law Dictionary, 1891 |
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“A woman who deliberately destroys a fetus is answerable for murder. And any fine distinction as to its being completely formed or unformed is not admissible among us.” — Basil of Caesarea (b. 329 A.D. - d. 379 A.D.) |
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“[D]estruction in every stage of pregnancy is MURDER. Every act of procuring abortion is murder, whether the person perpetrating such act intended to kill the woman or merely feloniously to destroy the fruit of her womb." — Judge Edward King (1794-1873), of Philadelphia Historical note: Judge King was nominated twice for U.S. Supreme Court, but never confirmed. |
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“When we consider the fact that foetal life is human life, distinct from that of the mother’s, . . . we cannot avoid the conclusion that the destruction of such a being would be the destruction of a human life, and that he or she who lends an agency in perpetrating the deed would, in the eye of the moral law, be guilty of murder.” — Prof. Alvin Edmond Small, Criminal Abortion, 1864 |
Historical note: Originally from Maine, and the first teacher of physiology and pathology at the Homeopathic Medical College in Pennsylvania, Prof. A.E. (Alvin Edmond) Small moved to Chicago in 1856 and served as professor, dean, and president at the Hahnemann Homeopathic Medical College. The college owed its existence in large part to Abraham Lincoln. In 1854, Lincoln drafted the charter for the school, and lobbied the Illinois legislature for approval.
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[W]e are struck with a full sense of human degradation; of mothers imbruing their hands in their infant's blood; of fathers equally guilty, counseling and procuring the commission of the crime; of nurses who lend themselves to the infamy; of members of the medical profession made wicked by their wholesale murders, out-Heroding Herod, eclipsing in criminality the pirate upon the seas, the midnight robber or highwayman; of the wretches who make this kind of murder a trade; who go forth with falshood and lies, in defiance of the mandates of the Almighty; of the public complacency that nurses the crime, or palliates it, or with insulting claims of legal assumption that it is a mere misdemeanor to go forth as a destroying angel to prey upon human life. Who can uphold or defend so common a violation of all just law, human and divine? Who can justify such assault upon all instinct and reason?”
— Prof. A.E. Small, Criminal Abortion, 1864 |
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“"The American Law Institute has proposed the legalization of abortion if a licensed physician 'believes there is a substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother or that the child would be born with a grave physical or mental defect or that the pregnancy resulted from rape, incest or other felonious intercourse [statutory rape].' Most proposals to liberalize state abortion laws have been similarly structured. The American Law Institute has classified abortion as an offense against the family, thereby belittling the homicidal aspects of the crime. Actually, no evaluation of abortion legislation is meaningful if it ignores the fact that an abortion kills an innocent human being.”
— Robert M. Byrn, Abortion in Perspective, for Duquesne University Law Review, vol. 5, no. 2 (1966-1967) |
Historical note: Robert Byrn was the attorney appointed as guardian ad litem for unborn children in the case Byrn v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation, 1972. Byrn (and the babies) lost the case. The next year, the Supreme Court would cite this loss to bolster their conclusions in Roe v. Wade.
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"Respect for the sanctity of innocent human life may very well be one of those rules of conduct upon which the survival of mankind depends."
— Robert M. Byrn, Abortion in Perspective, for Duquesne University Law Review, vol. 5, no. 2 (1966-1967) |
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