Bill Whittle on Abortion and Slavery

Abortion and Slavery

I had an interesting thought about the abortion issue, because it got to me the whole question of the "personhood" issue. And maybe this will help those who are on the pro-choice side understand the pro-life position. At least understand it, if not agree with it. I'm certainly not expecting them to agree with it, but at least understand it. And my thought experiment is this:

Whose side were you on in the Civil War? [Most people would say, the North.] As was I; 100%. Now, the South claims that the North launched this "War of Aggression" because they wanted to secede and state's rights and all that. But the reason the South left the Union was they wanted the state's rights, and the state right was the state right to have slaves. So let's just call what it is. They left before even Lincoln was inaugurated.

If you're a southerner, your position was, "This is my property, and they're going to launch a war, come all the way down to my house, and take my property, then of course it's aggression. Of course I'm going to fight it." Right?

The North's position is the same position, actually, as the pro-life crowd, which is, "That is a living person there. And you do not own them, and you do not have the right to determine their destiny. Therefore, we have a right to go down and free the slaves. We have not only a right but we have an obligation."

And so now what you find out is the Civil War comes down to a very simple issue: Are slaves people, yes or no?

Because if slaves are not people, if blacks from Africa are not people, not humans, then they're property like horses and cattle and so on. The war is absolutely wrong. The war is completely unjust and so on.

But if they are people, then the North has the moral right and the obligation to have the government step in on that person's individual choice and protect that individual.

That's the fundamentals of the pro-life position, is that it has it's own genetic code, it cannot defend itself, it is no longer subject to your choice, it's a person, and we're going to protect it.

Is it a person or isn't it?

Bill Whittle on the "Rubin Report" with Dave Rubin