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Human beings are property (Read the whole thing, don't flame title)
Northwestern Chronicle ^ | 27 October 2004 | James Fee

Posted on 10/31/2004 8:30:54 AM PST by StAthanasiustheGreat

Human beings are property

James Fee shows the similarities between abortion and slavery

Posted 10-27-2004, 21:48 by James Fee

The abortion issue is often called the most contentious issue in American politics. One side argues that the unborn have a right to life and seek to protect these most helpless of all. The other side argues that the woman should have the choice of killing her unborn child (fetus) which she had a part in bringing into being. Rarely have the opposing sides been more clearly drawn over an issue. Very few issues have drawn such a distinction between good and evil. Very few issues so obviously have a right and wrong position. Abortion is one of those issues.

Those who support the slaughter of innocents argue that the unborn are the property of the mother and the mother has a choice as to the future of that life. Though the euphemisms they use ‘muddy the waters' as much as possible. The mother has the freedom of her reproductive rights to terminate an "unwanted" pregnancy because it is her body. The unmistakable argument being made -- the unborn child is a piece of property. Where have we heard that before?

Those who constantly support the right for the mother to kill her child are espousing the very same rhetoric that allowed other people to enslave millions of Africans because they were "property." The very same rhetoric that allowed other people to exterminate the different, the weak, the undesirable. The twentieth century is filled with examples of man's inhumanity to man: the Holocaust, Stalin's purges, Mao's long march and Pol Pot's Khmer Revolution. Add to that the sins of past centuries, namely, the inhumanity of slavery, where by one person born with the same soul of liberty as anyone else becomes the property of another.

There were brave voices in the wilderness, the abolitionists who warned the world of the injustice of slavery. The world listened; it took a bloody Civil War to end the institution of slavery in this country. It took a long march for civil rights to put away those last lingering vestiges of slavery.

Today these tragedies repeat themselves when the unborn are declared the property of those who gave them life. They are declared the undesirable because of the inconvenience to our self-centered lifestyles. They are truly the weak for they cannot speak for themselves. And we as a society slaughter them on a scale that puts all the mass murders of the twentieth century (Mao excluded) to shame.

The abortion issue is not one of grays, but of black and white. Evil and good. If the unborn child is the property of the mother who gave him life and she can do what she pleases to him, then there is no immorality to slavery. The slave was property and owner could do whatever he willed. There is no difference; both abortion and slavery declare a human person to be property. If such a concept of a person as property is abhorrent, as I hope and know it is except for the most hardened racists in this world, opposition to abortion is the only possible position. The contradiction posed by those who espouse civil rights for all and an individual right to abort, makes any platitudes to Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, or any other pillar of abolition or civil rights by that person mute and worthless. They are hypocrites.

The right to life is the ultimate civil right. The right to not have ones life snuffed out before it has even begun. The right to be born into this world and to see it for all its beauty. The right to be born is the most basic civil and human right.

James Fee is a Weinberg senior. Contact him at j-fee@northwestern.edu.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: abortion; civilrights; prolife
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To: Fenris6

A curious dichotomy of the left is property rights and women's rights. "Our bodies, ourselves" philosophy means strict sovereignty of women over their bodies. Of course there is no such equivalent in the public sphere with respect to anything else.


21 posted on 10/31/2004 8:57:30 AM PST by Freedom4US
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To: Fenris6
Same here, only worse. Slaves sometimes got a hold of their masters and overseers and saw justice done. Babies in the womb have no chance when betrayed by their own mothers.
22 posted on 10/31/2004 8:59:06 AM PST by radicalamericannationalist (Kurtz had the right answer but the wrong location.)
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To: NWU Army ROTC

read after church


23 posted on 10/31/2004 9:06:59 AM PST by Californiajones ("The apprehension of beauty is the cure for apathy" - Thomas Aquinas)
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To: agere_contra
"...but we cannot be given a right to live..." Well, first off, these rights aren't given, merely protected by the government.

But rather than go round and round, my cliff notes re the slavery analogy is that the labeling of blacks/fetuses as sub-human/non-human is used to justify crimes against humanity.

I know that birth control isn't 100% effective, if I choose to take that risk, I have had opportunity to exercise my rights, and hold myself accountable for the consequences. And before anyone starts - less than 1% of abortions are from rape/incest. More than 65% are repeat offenders - abortion being used as a form of birth control.

24 posted on 10/31/2004 9:12:21 AM PST by Fenris6 (3 Purple Hearts in 4 months w/o missing a day of work? He's either John Rambo or a Fraud)
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To: NWU Army ROTC

I read the last line. The title still inflames.


25 posted on 10/31/2004 9:13:41 AM PST by the invisib1e hand (do not remove this tag under penalty of law.)
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To: NWU Army ROTC

Good Article....


26 posted on 10/31/2004 9:16:19 AM PST by shield (The Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God!!!! by Dr. H. Ross, Astrophysicist)
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To: Fenris6

This guy's comments on Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade is even better

http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=2564

You've got to scroll down a bit before you hit it.


27 posted on 10/31/2004 9:17:46 AM PST by WV910
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To: NWU Army ROTC

There are lawyers from UC Berkeley who argue that humans are property. If they are property then aborted babies can be taken by different companies with the mother's consent and used for medical research and production of pharmaceuticals. If they were not the property of the mother she wouldn't be able to sign them over to these companies.

The lawyers have been arguing for years that aborted babies are property so these industries can flourish. They are afraid that some might bring up the idea that human beings are property was quashed when slavery was abolished. They have sucessfully convinced many in our society that human beings are property.


28 posted on 10/31/2004 9:19:33 AM PST by hedgetrimmer
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To: NWU Army ROTC

Bump


29 posted on 10/31/2004 9:20:38 AM PST by AuntB (Justify your existence...DO something!)
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To: NWU Army ROTC
To equate owning your own body with slavery is preposterous.
Owning your own body is the most elementary of God given rights.

Does a fetus also have a right to live?
YES.

Does a fetus have a right to live inside some other person's body as a virtual parasite?
NO.

A woman has a right to have it evicted at any time.
If it then dies, it dies.

So9

30 posted on 10/31/2004 9:23:50 AM PST by Servant of the 9 (We are the Hegemon. We can do anything we damned well please.)
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To: NWU Army ROTC
"...the abolitionists who warned the world of the injustice of slavery."

Gee, weren't all those crazy Abolitionists overwhelmingly Christian? And didn't they also apply principles derived from "natural law" and Western philosophy to the problem?

Ya mean Western Civilization and Christianity were the most important factors in changing the status of slaves to "real" people? Who knew?

31 posted on 10/31/2004 9:23:55 AM PST by Gingersnap
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To: NWU Army ROTC

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him". -- Thomas Jefferson


32 posted on 10/31/2004 9:25:30 AM PST by Zon
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To: NWU Army ROTC

To further ingrain the idea in the American people that humans are property is the idea of sustainable development.

Sustainable development which is funded and pushed by the federal goverment through the EPA, USDA, BLM, and through state governments with "smart growth" and wildlands projects take on the United Nations philosphy that humans are merely biological resources, like a plant or wild animal. The effort to dispel the idea that humans have a special place in the universe is massive and is hitting Americans from all angles. The American people must not be swayed.


33 posted on 10/31/2004 9:25:58 AM PST by hedgetrimmer
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To: NWU Army ROTC
James Fee is a Weinberg senior.

And this adds to his credentials...exactly...HOW? Does it mean he hates Pallies, or what?

34 posted on 10/31/2004 11:06:41 AM PST by solitas
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To: NWU Army ROTC
Writing ennables slavery.

--Claude Levi-Strauss

35 posted on 10/31/2004 11:09:12 AM PST by RightWhale (Destroy the dark; restore the light)
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To: solitas

??????????? Weinberg is a school at Northwestern.


36 posted on 10/31/2004 1:09:38 PM PST by StAthanasiustheGreat (Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus Deus Aderit)
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To: NWU Army ROTC

Oh! Thanks. I'd thought it was something like an honorary position or chair like when you hear someone called a [whatever]-Fellow at a school...


37 posted on 10/31/2004 6:36:40 PM PST by solitas
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To: Freedom4US

"Reproductive Rights" is one of those public issues where the inequality between the sexes is rarely discussed.

Reproductive rights does not exist as a legal concept for men, and men are regularly told that they have responsibilities and not rights. A man has no "reproductive rights" that a woman is bound to respect, whether in nor out of marriage, to keep the baby or not. The only right that men have is to keep their pants zipped up, as the course of their lives and their hope for posterity is entirely dependent on the woman's "choice".

I remember hearing a feminazi screeching about how vital "reproductive rights " were for all human beings, insofar as their ability to determine the course of their lives is concerned. It got me to wondering how it is that no comparable "reproductive right" exists for men other than the right to keep your trousers zipped up. A man's income can involuntarily be confiscated to care for children that he does not want, affecting the course of his life. Under the law, he is utterly responsible to support any children with his DNA, and often even for those without it. In many states, women are allowed to ABANDON newborn children that they do not want at hospitals or firehouses, no questions asked. Men don't even have any "reproductive rights" in marriage, because his wife retains her "reproductive rights" if she "chooses" to exercise them.

I don't think either sex should have these "reproductive rights", and should deal with the concequences of a pregnancy, wanted or not. But if as the feminazi says, these rights are vital to human beings, than I wish to suggest the following remedies. An unmarried man, upon being promptly notified of an unwanted pregnacy by his mate, should have the option of a paternal veto (abortion) absolving him of financial and legal responsibility for the child. A married man who discovers that his wife has had an abortion against his wishes should recieve presumptive grounds for a divorce or annullment of the marriage, with the same holding true for one who concieves against his wishes.

Than again maybe the feminazi thinks that men shouldn't qualify for "reproductive rights" since she probably thinks men aren't human anyway.


38 posted on 11/01/2004 7:53:12 PM PST by DMZFrank
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