Claims of Similarity

1
Claims of Similarity

• Advocates begin with an issue about which the
  audience and advocate agree.
• Advocates then demonstrate essential similarities
  between this first issue and a second one.
• Advocates do this in the hope that the audience
  will transfer the values associated with the
  first issue to the second one as well.

2
Claims of Similarity in Slavery and Abortion
Debates

• Currently, slavery is a settled moral issue
• The Lincoln-Douglas debates showed the slavery
  dispute as involving incompatible moral
  positions defended by passionate committed
  advocates
• Anti-abortion advocates rely explicitly or
  implicitly on the slavery issue
• Current abortion debates are a replay of the
  slavery issue

3
Arguments of Similarity in the Abortion Debate

• Roe vs Wade and Dred Scott
• Fetus and Slave
• Pro-life and Suffrage Movements
• Human-life amendment and 13th and 14th amendments

4
Roe vs. Wade and Dred Scott vs. Sanford
5
Roe vs Wade and Dred Scott vs Sanford

• Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
• Slaves are not included and were not intended
  to be included under the word citizens in the
  Constitution.
• Justice Blackmun
• the unborn have never been recognized in the law
  as persons in the whole sense.

6
Statement of the Nebraska Coalition for Life

• The slave was considered as a non-person, i.e.,
  the property of the owner who then had choices to
  make. He could choose to buy, to sell, or to
  kill his slave. The rationale that society used
  to accept this was the abolitionists should not
  impose their morality on the slave-owner.
  Similarly, the unborn according to Roe is
  considered a non-person, i.e., the property of
  the woman who has a choice to terminate, i.e.,
  a choice to kill. The rationale for the response
  of society to those oppressed to such killing is
  pro-lifers should not impose morality on women.

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Functions of the Roe -- Dred Scott Claim

• Transfer the moral repugnance of the issue of
  Dred Scott to the issue of Roe.
• Since the Supreme Court made a mistake in Dred
  Scott it could also be wrong in Roe
• As Lincoln urged the appointment of Republican
  judges to overturn Dred Scott, anti-abortion
  advocates should urge the appointment of
  conservative judges who will overturn Roe.

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Fetus and Slave
9
Fetus, Slave, and Personhood

• According to anti-slavery advocates, slaves and
  humans shared many essential similarities.
• According to anti-abortion advocates, fetuses and
  humans share many essential similarities (shown
  especially in their visual rhetoric).

10
Alternatives to Personhood

• In the 1850s the alternative to human was slave.
  
• Today, according to anti-abortion advocates, the
  alternative to human is fetus.

11
Slaves and Masters

• If the fetus is the slave, who is the master?
• The mother becomes the master and has total power
  to make decisions regarding the fetus.
• To make the mother the Master is to give her the
  right to enslave the fetus.

12
Slave and Fetus as Property of the Master

• Clare Booth Luce
• An unborn child is an it-thing that does not
  become fully human until, in effect its
  born that as non-human or sub-human life, it
  is solely the property of the mother, who may
  destroy it with impunity, whenever and for
  whatever reasons she chooses.

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Suffrage Movement and Pro-life Movement
14
Pro-life and Suffrage Use Similar Tactics

• Graphic pictures and drawings
• Boycotts
• Petitions to legislators
• Civil Disobedience

15
Pro-life and Suffrage Exemplified

• John Noonan
• Persons dedicated to principles will often seem
  severe to those who are unaroused. How many
  mistakes the abolitionists made before they
  extirpated slavery! How many persons they
  offended by their seeming churlishness. But
  better to have been with them than standing on
  the sidelines fastidiously deploring their
  manners while swallowing the enormity of slave
  power.

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Human-life Amendment and the 13th and 14th
Amendments
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Similarities between the Human-life Amendment
and the 13th and 14th Amendments

• The 13th and 14th Amendments exemplify the
  advancement of moral sentiment regarding race.
• The human-life amendment exemplifies the
  advancement of moral sentiment regarding stages
  of human development.

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Implicit Similarities in Slavery and Abortion
Argument
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Implicit Similarities

• Pro-choice as popular sovereignty
• Federal funding as extension of slavery to the
  territories
• Cuomo as Douglas

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Pro-choice as Popular Sovereignty
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Pro-choice as Popular Sovereignty

• Stephen A. Douglas
• I hold that the people of slave holding states
  are civilized men as well as ourselves, that they
  bear consciences as well as we. It is for them
  to decide therefore the moral and religious right
  of slavery questions for themselves within their
  own limits.

22
Pro-choice as a Procedural Rather Than
Substantive Stance

• Most pro-choice advocates do not directly defend
  abortion, but like Douglas, they defend the locus
  of the decision.
• For Douglas, the slavery decision should be made
  by the States.
• For Pro-choice advocates, the abortion decision
  should be made by the mother.

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Federal Funding as Extension to the Territories
24
Slavery and Abortion Are Rarely Argued Along
Their Main Issues

• Most abolitionists agreed they were bound by the
  Constitution.
• Most anti-abortion advocates recognize that Roe
  vs. Wade is the current law .

25
Slavery Argued Along Subsidiary Lines

• Slavery abolition arguments were framed to
  prevent the expansion of slavery
• Lincoln one of the methods of treating it as a
  wrong is to make provision that it shall grow no
  larger.

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Abortion Argued Along Subsidiary Lines

• Abortion abolition arguments are framed to
  restrict and inhibit current laws
• Federal funding of abortion
• Restriction of abortion rights
• Elimination of certain abortion techniques

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Cuomo as Douglas
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Cuomo and Douglas

• Douglas never expressed his private feelings
  about slavery.
• Cuomo (a committed Catholic) eschewed the moral
  question of abortion for the procedural
  questions.

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Implications for Pro-life