It is not exactly a major headline when the pro-life movement in America is demonized in the media by the abortion lobby, but still, some of these attacks are more noteworthy than others. In the latest such broadside, one prominent abortion advocate is now claiming pro-lifers will essentially bring back slavery in the United States with the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
While speaking at the National Press Club on Tuesday, abortion provider and advocate Merle Hoffman said that if a Republican wins the 2012 presidential election and Roe v. Wade is overturned, America would become a country of “free states and slave states.”
“Each and every single [Republican] candidate has specified unequivocally that they would overturn Roe v. Wade. And if in fact they were in the power of the presidency and had the ability to do that we can see a pre-Roe reality … where you’d have a country where there, in my mind, there are free states and slave states,” said Hoffman who is the founder, president and CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center, and the publisher and editor-in-chief of On The Issues Magazine, a progressive feminist publication. (see the video here)
As liberals often do, Hoffman ignores the Constitution while making her ridiculous statements, as no president can unilaterally overturn the Supreme Court’s decision. She then continues to expand upon her delusion, calling what would literally be a life saving measure in overturning Roe an imposition of slavery on women.
Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, the states enacted laws to legalize or criminalize abortion. Should Roe be overturned by the Court, this power would once again return to the states in the absence of any new federal ban on abortion.
The “slave states,” according to Hoffman, would be those which outlaw abortion. Her premise is that a woman who is pregnant but who does not want to be is a “slave” – both to her child and to those who won’t let her kill the child. So a state that outlaws abortion would be a state that legalizes “slavery.”
Granted, this is a glimpse into the dismal, far-left mindset that sees a tiny child as a slave owner, but what should probably astonish us is how uncontroversial Hoffman’s comments are to many people.
“Women would be coming in droves to the free states … more and more women would attempt to have illegal abortions. We’re going to have things like underground railroads to help these women,” she said. “We’re looking at a very dim future if any of these Republican candidates occupy that Oval Office.”
Hoffman’s slavery argument provides a twisted understanding of freedom versus oppression that masks the reality of the pro-abortion movement – that human beings are being killed by the thousands on a daily basis. And while she may view states that protect the lives of the unborn as somehow being oppressive to women, the pro-life “slave states” would in reality promote true freedom in their respect for life.
In the slave states of American history, slaves in the South were not considered human beings but property that could be bought and sold. Although science could prove they were completely human, many believed that these fellow human beings did not deserve the life and liberty we all want for ourselves. In other words, their humanity, and thus their human rights, were denied. However, the free blacks in the North, though no more human than slaves in the South, were recognized by society as human beings and not property. Abolitionists respected the humanity of the earliest African Americans and fought to protect them from those who rejected their God given freedom.
To abortion promoters like Hoffman, the unborn, like the slaves in the old South, are not considered human beings. Hoffman and her comrades think women should treat their unborn children as foreign objects, as property, that can be discarded at will. In Hoffman’s vision, the “free states” are not those who recognize the freedom and humanity of the oppressed, but that grant the freedom to kill and discard the oppressed, as slaves were once treated in the South.
As the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade approaches this weekend, thousands of people from across the country are planning to descend on Washington, D.C. for the annual March for Life. Not only is this an effort to stand for overturning Roe, but for cultivating a culture in the United States that respects and recognizes the humanity of the unborn.
It will take more that simply overturning Roe to end abortion in America, but if the reversal were to occur, it would be a huge step in the right direction. Ridiculous statements like Hoffman’s that ignore reality to promote a radical agenda only serve to create hostility and draw attention away from those affected most by abortion – the unborn.
While Hoffman sees a “very dim future” for our country on the day Roe is overturned, the millions who will be given the opportunity to live will no doubt see that day as one of the brightest in America’s history.
LifeNews.com Note: Reprinted with permission from Human Life International’s World Watch forum. Adam Cassandra is a Communications Specialist at Human Life International.
