Whose Side Are You On?

Whose side would you have taken then?


Dred Scott	OR	The US Supreme Court "The question is simply this: can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community ...We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution..." Scott v. Sanford, 1857

Whose side are you taking now?

The US Supreme Court

"The Constitution does not define 'person' in so many words ...But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application ...the word 'person,' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn."

Roe v. Wade, 1973

Week 12 (1st Trimester)

Week 24 (2nd Trimester)

Unborn Children

Note: This was written before the 2000 presidental election when Al Gore was running but the present Democratic candidates have the same point of view as Al Gore did.

Al Gore has described the Supreme Court decision as "a common sense approach that there is a developmental process during which the burden kind of shifts over time. And they say -- you know, they talk about the burden being different -- burden of proof different in the first trimester than the third trimester. I mean, that's the way the Supreme Court has addressed it." (Al Gore, NBC's "Meet the Press" July 16, 2000)

To understand where Al Gore is coming from, just look at his Democratic party's legacy of supporting slavery. In 1858, Republican Abraham Lincoln debated Democrat Stephen Douglas for the US Presidency. Legalized slavery was the hot button issue of the day. Douglas advanced something called "popular sovereignty" which would empower the people of new states to decide for themselves whether their states would allow slavery. For Douglas and the Democrats of the 1850s, choice ranked higher than the blatant human rights violations of legalized slavery. Al Gore's opinion about abortion is the same as Douglas' about slavery. It is a matter of choice. For Al Gore and the Democratic platform of our day, choice ranks higher than the blatant human right violations of empowering parents to destroy their children.

Stephen Douglas didn't see Dred Scott as a person with rights because he was black; now Al Gore doesn't see these children as people with rights because they are unborn. The political apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

If Mr. Gore wants to talk about "common sense," he should (a) recall that human beings beget human beings, something you'd think he'd know by the existence of his own children; (b) just look at the photographs of unborn children available; and (c) listen to the testimony of abortion survivors such as Gianna Jessen and Sarah Smith.

"This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not overturned in a day, or a year, or even a decade... The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life?" - Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation.

Whose side are you on?