8mm
Posted on 05/20/2007 8:28:04 AM PDT by wagglebee
Slavery was once both legal and immoral, much as abortion is today. The Dred Scott decision was overturned because it was both bad jurisprudence and immoral—just like Roe v. Wade.
In supporting the Dred Scott decision, the candidate for president, Stephen Douglas, argued that he didn’t care whether slavery was voted up or voted down. He only cared for the right of the people to decide.
Essentially, that’s Rudy Giuliani’s argument with regard to abortion. He is personally opposed to it, but he supports a woman’s right to choose because it is the law of the land.
I wonder if Rudy worked to legalize abortion before Roe? If he was in favor of abortion rights before Roe, while even then being personally opposed to the act of abortion, then we have further light on his value system.
But, if he was against abortion before Roe, why?—and on what grounds did he oppose it then? And what changed when Roe v. Wade was handed down? This eliminates the “it’s legal therefore I must support it” maneuver.
Imagine a person saying, “I’m personally opposed to slavery, but if somebody else wants to own slaves, then I’ll support their right to do so.” Or, “I’m personally opposed to slavery, but if a state were to vote to legalize it, who am I to oppose their sovereign legal right to do so?”
This is essentially saying “that which is legal trumps that which is moral”—a statement that is itself immoral.
In the course of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Stephen Douglas stated, “We in Illinois … tried slavery, kept it up for 12 years, and finding that it was not profitable we abolished it for that reason.”
To which Lincoln replied, “[Judge Douglas] says he ‘don’t care’ whether [slavery] is voted up or voted down in the Territories…. Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in slavery, but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in it; because no man can logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down.”
Lincoln would be asking Rudy today, “If you are personally against abortion because it is wrong, then how can you say you don’t care whether it is upheld or overturned? No man can logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down.”
At the core of this debate is whether we believe there could ever be such a thing as an immoral law. The belief that there is no such thing as an immoral law is held by intellectually honest secularists who reject any notion of a transcendent moral law or natural law. Consistent secularists believe only in man-made “positive law”—law that is determined simply by the will of lawmakers (not grounded in anything transcendent). By definition, then, majorities are always morally right. Abortion today, like slavery once was, is moral simply because it is legal. Majorities create rights and determine morality by passing laws.
If you believe there can be immoral laws, then your moral faculties are functioning properly. You understand majorities have often passed immoral laws. You understand the legal and the moral are two different things. Perhaps you’re familiar with Plato’s Laws and the distinction between the good citizen and the good man—the former does that which is good in his own city, the latter does that which is good in every city. In fact, what makes a city good is if the good man can also be a good citizen, and if so, then the city has good laws.
America should strive to be a good city, composed of good men (and women), with good laws. Twenty-five centuries of Western thought have taught us that the right course of conduct in both public and private is for the moral to inform and shape the legal.
Lincoln, knew this. Douglas did not. Apparently, neither does Rudy.
I would love to see someone ask him this question!
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Good piece. As a Catholic, Giuliani cannot support abortion. Period.
Can I ask some opinions on Abortion? The way I read the article and the responses is that Rudy has a moral duty to stop abortion. Is that right or am I misreading?
Now if the courts overturned Roe V. Wade then the issue of abortion goes back to the individual states and as President Rudy won’t have much say except in certain cases like funding abortions for federal workers for example.
Now does the Pro life Movement wants Rudy and the Federal Government to ban all abortion through the use of enacting laws or by court decisions?
Taney gets a bad rap, IMHO. Scott was decided 7-2, and clearly grounded in the Constitution and its history. Roe was not. The analogy is a bad one.
ML/NJ
This analogy is severely flawed.
When he made this statement Douglass was not commenting on the Dred Scott decision, he was arguing for his "squatter sovereignty" Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed the settlers in these territories to vote on whether to permit slavery in the territory.
For the Scott decision to be fully analogous to the Roe decision, it would have forced all states to allow slavery within their boundaries, with the decision to practice slavery left up to each individual, not the state.
Recent research has shown that Chief Justice Taney was working on exactly such a decision.
Dougless never opposed the right of every state to decide for itself whether to allow or prohibit slavery. Roe removed the right of every state to make such a decision. Since abortion has been removed from the political process, there is nothing to vote on.
I think the Dred Scott Decision is used because it retrospect it is so blatantly immoral. However, purely in terms of horrible decisions, I think it makes far more sense to compare Roe to Plessy v. Ferguson (which is also the only SCOTUS decision which a future SCOTUS subsequently overturned, Dred Scott was made moot by post-Civil War amendments).
If Rudy thinks abortion is wrong - then he has a moral duty to speak out against it & use his pulpit to try to sway public opinion on it - also to stand up as a role model for young & impressionable people. To expect any less of our leaders is to ......well........to get the government we deserve - which is what we have now.
In fact, Dred Scott is still the law of the land in some respects -- though (obviously) not with regard to slavery. The basic underlying premise of that case -- that only a "person" has legal standing in a U.S. court of law -- still holds true to this day.
Its very simple. People in the legal profession are taught to have such a high respect for stare decisis, letting an existing decision stand, and respecting the law as it is written and decided, that they are held hostage to it that they can’t ethically mold their views to the contrary. I’ll liken that to a few lines from The Untouchables, where the reporter asked Eliot Ness, as played by Kevin Costner, his feelings on prohibition, “It is the Law of the Land.” Contrast that with his answer to a reporter near the end after Capone goes to prison when the reporter asks his feeling about them repealing porhibition, “I think I’ll go have a drink then.”
IOW, lawyer/lawman types are so hostage to the idea of respecting the law that persons of good will that otherwise disagree with it feel they have to lend their support to it, rather than working to change the law... They lack cahonas..
Why could a 75-year-old daughter not use the same reasoning to apply to a "right to choose" to get rid of an elderly mother whose care is threatening her own health? (And don't say it is not realistic to claim the health risk that many face!)
Or, why should the nation's law not provide that same "right to choose" to both men and women who consider another individual to be a threat to their personal health or wellbeing, an inconvenience to their lifestyle, or merely a burden they cannot take care of?
Clearly, America's laws against the taking of life do not allow for a citizen's "right to choose" murder as an optional way of solving a personal dilemma, no matter how perplexing or burdensome.
Unmask the faulty logic of the fence sitters, and let them articulate what is their real reason for favoring the taking of a life in the womb! Is it not possiblly because they do not see children in the womb as beings "endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
Would he? Lincoln was more concerned with preserving the union than with ending slavery.
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, "Letter to Horace Greeley" (August 22, 1862), p. 388.
Rudy is wrong on abortion. But the comparison to Lincoln is lame.
I wonder when I stand before my Creator, will he deem slavery more an abomination against human life than the slaughter of the unborn?
I also wonder since several states have fallen over themselves offering apologies for ancestrial participation in the then legal slave trade, how those same ancestors would view our current “legal” practice of abortion and if they’d not only apologize for the practice - but apologize for having part in giving us breath and the ability to murder our own.
May God have mercy upon us and allow us stand upon the hope that one day our descendants who survive abortion clinics would offer an apology to the world in our behalf for our legalized murders.
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Numerous of them are to be found wanting.
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