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Posted on 08/11/2026 11:05:43 PM PDT by Morgana
While Americans were having abortions in 1776, America’s founders in Philadelphia put their names on a statement that all, created equal, are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
One of the Declaration of Independence signers, James Wilson, specified several years later that “with consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law.”
Life often hasn’t been protected. But decade after decade, Americans who are now largely forgotten made noble sacrifices to help the least among us. Some pro-life heroes and heroines continue that work. Perhaps a historian 150 years from now will write about them, but now it’s my turn to tell you about a largely forgotten Philadelphian who stood for life 150 years ago
In 1876, abortion was illegal throughout the United States, but as my book The Press and Abortion, 1838–1988 shows, newspapers ran thinly veiled ads for abortion pills. Records from the American Medical Association chronicle criticism of the practice. And in the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division, I learned about many doctors, including Andrew Nebinger, who spoke out on their own.
Philadelphia resident Nebinger had a reputation for compassion. During the Civil War he worked without pay as head surgeon of a hospital for wounded soldiers. Later he protested the city’s lack of action in cleaning up cesspools and flushing culverts, which contributed to a cholera epidemic in 1866. He reminded officials of “the long and weary hours of agony [among] these victims of public neglect.”
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
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WOW 😮. What happened to the Presbyterian church?
The author here, Marvin Olasky, has several books on views about abortion through American history. Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America as well as The Press and Abortion, 1838–1988, and The Story of Abortion in America.
I thought his name sounded familiar. I have one of those books.
Makes you wonder where we get the audacity to ask God to bless America and why He does. He will not be mocked forever, though. While Americans are killing their babies in their mothers’ wombs, women from sh*thole countries around the world are coming here to populate and eventually take over this country.
Liberalism. Next question.
To be fair, it was a common belief that the fetus was not alive until s/he could be felt by the mother, which is why the old-fashioned term for feeling the baby was quickening, meaning coming alive. It is only after the science of obstetrics, the understanding of fetal development, and the replacement of midwives with trained doctors, did people begin to understand the life was alive from conception. It was many of the earliest feminists who were the most pro-life.
P.S. One of the earliest gynecologists was Ancieto Ortega, who when he wasn’t building Mexico’s first women’s hospital was writing the Zaragosa March (Zaragosa was the general at the original Cinco de Mayo) and other compositions.
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