This article was submitted to amerikaner.org by Grant Norman. If you would like to submit your own content, please email amerikanercontributions@proton.me
Five months ago, I tried my hand at writing an article on the Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v Wade. At the time, I believed that the issue was being covered by other, more capable writers, and so I shelved the project. Now, on the other side of the midterm elections and a different focus, I am trying again.
Both sides of the abortion debate often resort to likening their opponents to supporters of slavery. For the “Pro-Choice,” to restrict the ability of a woman to murder her unborn offspring is to hold her in bondage. Meanwhile, the Pro-Life crowd see abortion as a moral crime which history will condemn the way that slavery is today.
Neither side gives much more thought to these supposed parallels. They have some rhetorical flourish, and slavery is one of the three things that American schooling ensures everyone knows about, but it is more fun to dress up like a character from Amazon’s A Handmaid’s Tale or do yet another deep-dive on Margaret Sanger, racism, and eugenics than to actually think through the Civil War comparison.
This is surprising because talk of the country splitting up has been rising for years now. Talking heads across the political spectrum are eagerly speculating on the causes and course of a so-called National Divorce (or its coarser cousin, Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo). The specific cause of the coming conflict is always related to whatever the latest hot-button issue is, and earlier this year the spotlight focused on abortion.
While there was a great deal of local variation across different states with laws on abortion, the overturning of Roe removed the brackets on the more restrictive end of the equation, and many states in the South and Midwest responded by tightening access to the procedure.
Even though the vast majority of laws are well in-line with norms in sainted, progressive Europe, American liberals cried bloody murder. States like California and Minnesota stepped up to serve as “sanctuary states” for women seeking to abort their children.
The patchwork of state restrictions on abortion, illustrated on several handy maps, calls to mind the division of “slave states” and “free states” in the United States during the middle of the nineteenth century. While the decision to return the issue to the states has allowed the character of different states to shape policy, abandoning the parameters of a one-size-fits-all system has introduced similar questions that the United States faced in the 1850’s.
Just as Northern states would harbor runaway slaves and issue petitions on behalf of slaves, governments and non-governmental organizations in pro-abortion states are both encouraging women to travel to their states for abortions, and providing abortifacients by mail to circumvent the laws of other states.
The most worrying trend is the material and moral support that pro-abortion terrorist organizations like Jane’s Revenge have received from elected officials and other notable figures. Like John Brown who murdered Southern Whites and sparked off slave insurrections with the aim of killing more, these groups commit acts of destruction and are either lionized or condemned depending on how one’s political views work out.
John Brown was both hailed as a hero and condemned as a monster in the U.S. Senate. For the time being, pro-lifers still feel obligated to condemn the bombing of abortion clinics in the 90’s, while federal law enforcement agencies are tightening the screws on even milquetoast anti-abortion activists.
Like the slavery question, feelings on abortion are strong. But to say that a second civil war will occur over the issue of abortion is as foolhardy as the assertion that slavery was the cause of the first. The issue of slavery was an “incident of the war”, as the saying goes among historians more sympathetic to the Southern cause. The status of slavery was more of a reflection of the larger cultural, political, and economic trends which differed between north and south. What divided the Yankees and the Rebels was not merely one issue, but a whole host of questions from the material to the metaphysical.
In a similar way, abortion is not the most important issue for many Americans, but it is one which signifies a larger divide in society, a divide which is far wider than that between the states on the eve of the Civil War. Back then, Northerners and Southerners were, broadly speaking, practicing Christians and of Anglo-Saxon stock. They celebrated the same holidays and honored the same pantheon of founding fathers. Even after the horrors of the war and the Reconstruction era, veterans of the Union and Confederate armies could and did unite from the halls of Congress to picnics and other reunion events. Today we have a hodgepodge of hostile ethnicities and ideologues who share little in common, not even united by a common language or paying taxes. It is hard for some to imagining sitting down at Thanksgiving with family members they disagree with politically, much less former enemies on the battlefield.
Of course, at the same time, the divides between states mask divides within states as well, between urban centers and rural hinterlands. Even there though, the results from the 2022 midterm elections should give pause. While ways of life have not converged, many large cities in the South defied conventional wisdom and supported Republican candidates. States are solidifying with fewer divided legislatures and more congressional caucuses entirely from one party or the other.
Again, the question of abortion is not going to break up the American federation, but it is useful to think about it as a heuristic. The issue is one of the visible parts of the massive iceberg of differences between inhabitants of this country. The parallels to slavery during the period before the Civil War are much more interesting than what the hacks on either side of the abortion debate dare to entertain.
Good stuff. You should keep at it.
There are alot of assumptions in this article and its severely contaminated by presentism. 170 years ago if you were from anywhere in Alabama let alone the same town didnt automatically mean you were accepted even as a neutral party let alone trusted. Kin meant blood family let alone the entirety of the <100 people township. Today's ideas/ideals grafted on to the past is a mistake.