Friday, February 10, 2017

Lincoln on slavery

In March 1860 Abraham Lincoln spoke at Yale on the campaign trail to the White House. Yale's student body was divided on the issue of slavery, an important plank in the Democrats' platform. "If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality; if it is wrong they [the Democrats] cannot justly insist upon its extension—its enlargement."

That's how I feel about legal abortion, both the federal and state laws; if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned, the issue just goes back to the states where it is still immoral even if legal. If abortion is right, then all acts and laws are wrong and have no meaning. 

However, this statement by Lincoln was a paraphrase of a writer who influenced him and many abolitionists, Leonard Bacon, a Congregational preacher and writer who wrote it in 1846. The Congregationalists are now blended into United Church of Christ which has been supporting abortion since 1971. President Obama was a UCC member, but so was Harriet Beecher Stowe (Congregationalist).

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