On the Right Side of History

By Ken Concannon
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 10/28/04)

When the Supreme Court issued the Roe v. Wade decision 31 years ago, most pro-lifers understood that the Court had managed to resurrect Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 decision that made it impossible to limit the spread of slavery prior to the Civil War. Until this year I've heard the comparison between Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade a few times, but only in pro-life circles and publications. Within the last few months, however, I've heard Dred Scott mentioned twice by prominent politicians in very public places, when the issue under discussion was abortion or the Supreme Court — which suggests to me that we are approaching a climactic point in the three-decade war for the soul of this country.

Back in August, Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for the Senate from Illinois, said in an interview on ABC television that he was especially sensitive to the issue of abortion because he is a descendant of black slaves. He said in that interview that the Dred Scott decision did to black slaves then what Roe v. Wade does to the unborn now. The two decisions separated a specific group of human beings from the protections of the Constitution.

In the second presidential debate, President Bush, who is nowhere near as eloquent as Keyes, made a somewhat obtuse reference to the 19th-century decision when asked about Supreme Court appointments. The president said he would not nominate judges who would be inclined to render Dred Scott-type decisions.

Although the reference appeared to be a non sequitur for many who viewed that debate, some pro-choice commentators took the reference as code for Roe v. Wade. They were right.

Roe v. Wade is the Dred Scott decision of our time. The two decisions are frighteningly similar. Both were decided by seven to two votes of the Justices. Both decisions enshrined an evil institution as a Constitutional right, protecting it from legislative interference. Both decisions divided the country. Both decisions victimized a specific class of human being by separating it from the protection of the law. And both decisions used similar logic to affect that separation.

Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored the Dred Scott decision, used citizenship to victimize black people when he wrote: "A free Negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a 'citizen' within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States."

The citizenship problem created by Dred Scott was remedied by the 14th Amendment (added after the Civil War) by guaranteeing to "persons" the protection of the Constitution. So Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote Roe v. Wade, used personhood to disqualify the unborn by stating that "the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense."

There are other similarities. The decisions spawned hatred. Prior to the Dred Scott decision in 1857 and Roe v. Wade in 1973, there was room for legislative compromise on the hot issues of slavery and then abortion. But the decisions eliminated the political middle ground. In the absence of political discourse between the opposing sides, lines were drawn, and hatred followed.

So great was the hatred in the years immediately following Dred Scott that the slave states chose to secede from the Union upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, because he might have been an abolitionist (he wasn't). And so great is the hatred of George W. Bush this election season that most political commentators confess to having never witnessed this much anger in a presidential campaign. And they wonder why.

The answer is Roe v. Wade and control of the federal courts. Because he is the most pro-life president we've had since the Roe decision, and because the president makes no bones about his religious faith, the moral relativists who support abortion and its related evils are as afraid of George W. Bush as slave owners were of Abraham Lincoln. As the country becomes more pro-life, I suspect that the abortion advocates believe, as I do, that the repudiation of what they represent will soon be upon them. So they rant, they rave and they spew hatred.

History has repudiated the Dred Scott decision and the evil institution it enabled, while making heroes of the brave abolitionists who spoke for people who could not speak for themselves. History, I'm sure, will do the same for Roe v. Wade, the evil institution enabled by it and those of us who steadfastly oppose it.

Concannon is a freelance writer from All Saints Parish in Manassas.

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