There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the upcoming Dobbs decision, in which the Supreme Court might finally overturn the Court’s deadly earlier decisions in Roe v. Wade and its companion case Doe v. Bolton.  Many of the articles bemoaning the coming decision have been filled with incivility, mindless vitriol, fear-mongering, absurd non sequiturs, and outright lies.

When the Supreme Court overturned its 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick seventeen years later in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas – thereby protecting homosexual activity – liberals weren’t screaming that Brown v. Board of Education was next, because they knew that would have been an absurd non sequitur.

And today, no progressive liberal would find it acceptable were a conservative group giving out the home addresses of the dissenting judges in Dobbs, so that groups of angry demonstrators could gather outside their homes to pressure them to change their minds.  No, only one side may do these things.

Well, to those defending Roe, I have only one thing to say:  You’re on the wrong side of history.

I’ve always wanted to say that.  Mostly just to show people on the other side how it feels.  I do in fact believe that those who are arguing for abortion are on the wrong side of history and that, in fifty years, with advances in neonatal care and greater knowledge of the developing child in the womb, abortion will be seen as barbaric as slavery does to us today.

And just for the record, if you study history, you’ll find that when your side is the side that’s using euphemisms to cover up what you’re doing – breaking windows, lying, threatening people with violence, and stirring up mob anger, fear, and resentment – you usually are on the “wrong side of history.”

But simply saying to one’s opponents, “You’re on the wrong side of history,” is no argument. It is the verbal equivalent of a patronizing pat on the head.  Imagine making a sophisticated argument about something only to have your interlocutor blurt out: “Well that’s just stupid!” or “You’re just wrong!”  Now, I may be wrong; I may even be stupid. But you will have to make an actual argument to show that.

Too many people today assume they have no need to make logical arguments and can instead simply assume that “all good and sensible people” agree with them because, well, “it’s obvious.”  The problem is, it almost never is, and with especially controversial issues, such as abortion, you can’t simply assume it is.  What you are saying when you claim, “It’s obvious,” is that the people who disagree with you are stupid — too dense to see what’s “obvious.”

So I’m not going to simply say to those who disagree with me about abortion, “You’re on the wrong side of history.”  I think they are; they obviously think they’re not. Fine. We need to move on and get to some real arguments and actual data.

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“Disparate impact” and racial bias seem to be popular topics at the moment.  You can barely go more than a day or two without a discussion of them showing up on the mainstream media. So let’s talk about them with reference to abortion.

The claim one often hears is that overturning Roe would be “disastrous” for the black community. But here is the reality:

• Abortion is the leading cause of death for African Americans, more than all other causes combined, including HIV, violent crimes, accidents, cancer, and heart disease.

• Abortions are performed on black women at a rate 3.5 times higher than white women; black women have over 30 percent of abortions though they are only 12.6 percent of the population.

• Over their lifetimes, black women average 1.6 more pregnancies than White women but are 5 times more likely to have a pregnancy that ends in abortion.

• Approximately 360,000 pre-born black babies are aborted every year, nearly 1000 per day.

• More than 16-million black babies have died by abortion since 1973.

• The percentage of the black population in the U.S. has dropped from 12.6 percent in 2010 to 12.4 percent in 2020. The black population in the U.S. (41 million) has dropped precipitously below the Hispanic population (63 million), numbers that would be radically different had 16 million black lives mattered enough to society to protect them from abortion and raise them to fruitful adulthood.

You might be thinking, “Yes, but the abortion providers didn’t abort these black children because they were black.”  First, liberals never allow this excuse when it comes to any other “disparate impact” case. And second, are you so sure?

Everyone admits now that the eugenicist Margaret Sanger, the racist founder of Planned Parenthood, began her “Negro Project” in 1939 to stop the growth of the black population.  And it’s still the case that 79 percent of Planned Parenthood surgical abortion facilities are within walking distance (2 miles) of relatively high black and/or Hispanic populations.  Black women are five times more likely to have an abortion than white women.  If that isn’t evidence of “systemic racism,” then the term is meaningless.

So all you people demonstrating to protect the abortion industry, you’re not only on the wrong side of history, you’re also racist.

You?  No, not you!  You’re the good people!  Sixteen million dead black babies and counting, and you’re absolutely certain the people pushing back against this racial genocide are the horrible, evil ones, and you – you – are the people who will be judged by history as the ones who really cared about the black community.

And you are so certain of this, in fact, that you’re willing to silence your opponents, terrorize them in mobs, lie repeatedly, vandalize churches, disrupt church services, desecrate religious sacraments, tear down free women’s care centers that provide women the resources to make the choice not to terminate the life of their unborn child, and even overthrow the democratic process itself, all so that some women can terminate the lives of their unborn sons and daughters

Wow.  Well, that’s just stupid.

 

*Image: A Pastoral Visit by Richard Norris Brooke, 1881 [National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.]

You may also enjoy:

Robert Royal’s Who Are the Abortion Extremists?

Hadley Arkes’ Abortion and Slavery

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