Scott Tibbs
The pro-liberty case for slavery?
By Scott Tibbs, October 13, 2023
The most effective way to promote liberty for Blacks forced into chattel slavery in the first half of the Nineteenth Century was to allow slave owners the freedom of choice to continue owning Black people to use as forced labor. If you think that does not make any sense, and
it self-evidently does not, then you should have the same reaction to "the pro-life case for choice."
Abraham Lincoln said that this nation "cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." Surgical abortion alone has killed 60 million innocent babies, and chemical abortions have terminated many more lives than that. Nikki Haley's argument for a states' rights solution is exactly the same as the states' rights argument for slavery. We needed to abolish slavery nationwide, and we did with the Thirteenth Amendment. We need to do the same with abortion.
If you want to leave this decision to the states, then you are not pro-life. State sovereignty is a founding value of this nation, but state sovereignty should not take precedence over basic human rights. If we believe abortion is the unjust termination of innocent human life, then it logically follows that a national ban is the only humane option. Haley is trying to play to the middle as if she is in a general election, but that is politically foolish in a Republican primary.
The fact that Haley repeatedly ducked setting a gestational age cutoff for abortion is especially disturbing. It also makes no sense politically. A national ban on partial birth abortions had wide political support among both Republicans
and Democrats and was signed into law by George W. Bush. If Republicans cannot even call for a nationwide ban on the most gruesome third-trimester abortions, they are no better than the most pro-abortion Democrat.
Will Saletan is right that Haley's argument for having the decision on banning abortion be made by elected officials closest to the people logically leads to having the decision made by a woman and her doctor. After all, who is closer to the people than a pregnant woman, her doctor and her partner? By refusing to make a consistent case for banning abortion based on fundamental human rights, Haley is essentially taking the same position as pro-choice Democrats. Why should any Republican vote for her?
The Fourteenth Amendment assured that the Bill of Rights applies to all Americans, and the states do not have the option to override it. There cannot be a worse violation of equal protection of the laws than allowing abortion. What we need now is not equivocation, and we should not allow states to decide for themselves whether they will allow murder or not. We need bold leadership that will protect every innocent human life, from fertilization to natural death.
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