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This article was first published in
www.worldnetdaily.com
Power concedes
nothing without a demand. --
Frederick Douglass
Prologue
While I fully realize that
the subject of abortion is an unspoken blasphemy in polite company,
nevertheless during this political season I feel compelled to address
this most critical issue of modern times. Why? Like slavery, abortion
gives one person the power to terminate the life of another under the
color of law.
Chattel slavery, or the
idea that one man can own and sell another person as his own personal
property, was outlawed in 1865 by force of arms in the Civil War and
de jure (by law) via the Thirteenth Amendment, nevertheless American
society has a modern form of slavery that in my opinion is vastly more
clandestine and diabolical than America’s 400 year experiment with “that
peculiar institution” - Abortion.
Below is an excerpt of what
I consider Frederick Douglass’ greatest speech and one of the greatest
American speeches of all time. To stress my point on the
slavery/abortion paradigm, I have modified the text of Douglass’s speech
about slavery to reflect modern abortion policy (i.e., “Slavery” =
“Abortion”; “slave” = “pre-born baby”; “slaveholder” =
“pro-Abortionist”).
Frederick Douglass
Speaks about the Fourth of July
July 4, 1852 Rochester,
New York
Fellow Citizens:
Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today?
What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence?
Are the great principles of
political freedom and natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of
Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring
our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits,
and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your
independence to us? . . . .
This Fourth of July is
yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters
into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join
you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do
you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so,
there is a parallel to your conduct.
And let me warn you, that
it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering
up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying
that nation in irrecoverable ruin. I can today take up the lament of a
peeled and woe-smitten people. . . .
My subject, then, fellow
citizens, is "American [Abortion]." I shall see this day and its popular
characteristics from the [pre-born baby]'s point of view. Standing here,
identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not
hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of
this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions
of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and
revolting.
America is false to the past, false to the present, and
solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and
the crushed and bleeding [pre-born baby] on this occasion, I will, in
the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which
is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are
disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce,
with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to
perpetuate [Abortion]-the great sin and shame of America "I will not
equivocate; I will not excuse";
I will use the severest
language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any
man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart
a [pro-Abortionist], shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in
this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a
favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and
denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would
be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there
is nothing to be argued.
What point in the
anti-[Abortion] creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the
subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to
prove that the [pre-born baby] is a [person]? That point is conceded
already. Nobody doubts it. The [pro-Abortionists] themselves acknowledge
it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it
when they punish disobedience on the part of the [pre-born baby]. ...
The manhood of the
[pre-born baby] is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern
statute-books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe
fines and penalties, the teaching of the [pre-born baby] to [eventually]
read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the
beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the
[pre-born baby]. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the
air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the
reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the [pre-born baby]
from a brute, then I will argue with you that the [pre-born baby] is a
man! ...
Would you have me argue
that [the pre-born baby] is entitled to liberty? That he [not his
mother] is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared
it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of [Abortion]? Is that a question for
republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and
argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a
doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand?
How should I look today in the presence of Americans,
dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural
right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively
and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to
offer and insult to your understanding.
There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that
[Abortion] is wrong for him. ...
What, then, remains to be
argued? Is it that [Abortion] is not divine; that God did not establish
it; that our doctors of [politics, medicine and law] are mistaken? There
is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who
can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time
for such argument is past. ...
What to the American
[pre-born baby] is your Fourth of July I answer, a day that reveals to
him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and
cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To [the pre-born] your
celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your
national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty
and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence;
[To the pre-born] your
shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns,
your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and
solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and
hypocrisy's thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation
of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more
shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this
very hour.
Go where you may, search
where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the
Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when
you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every-day
practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting
barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America[’s
conception-to-partial-birth abortion policy] reigns without a rival.
[End]
Epilogue
The year 1972 was a year filled with tragedy and irony
- Tragedy, because the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade was the
genesis of a death sentence to tens of millions of innocent babies.
Ironic, because that same year the Supreme Court took away the death
penalty against the most wicked and irredeemable murderers, rapists,
gangbangers and child molesters by making the death penalty
unconstitutional in the case of Furman v. Georgia.
...for over one third (36%) of all abortions are by
black women. According to the 2007 US Census Data, “Half
as many viable black children are killed before they can be born as get
the chance to live (503 per 1000 births).”
(http://wolfpangloss.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/abortion-is-killing-one-out-of-three-black-children-in-the-womb/)....A
slave of 1808 has a better chance of life than a black pre-born baby of
2008.
Jefferson, in his Declaration of Independence
guaranteed all Americans three rights - “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit
of Happiness.” These rights were “inalienable” meaning they derived from
God and cannot be taken away by man. By failing to protect the
most vulnerable in our midst, Americans should wonder do we therefore
possess
any rights that God is bound to respect?
*N.B. For the complete text of
Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July speech see:
www.redandgreen.org/speech.htm |
