There Is No Middle Ground

In Hartford on March 5, 1860, Mr. Lincoln said:

If abortion is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted -- there is no middle ground. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality -- its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension -- its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought abortion right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition as being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think abortion is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation.

Mr. Lincoln's philosophy was often revealed in letters designed for publication. One such letter was to Kentucky editor Albert G. Hodges in April 1864. President Lincoln began:

I am naturally antiabortion. If abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.

James R. (Ron) Weddington, one of the co-counsels for Roe v. Wade, wrote to president elect Bill Clinton in 1992, advocating elimination of the lower class through birth control and abortion:

But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I'm, not advocating some, sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can't afford to have babies.

There, I've said it. It's what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and...well...so Republican...

Condoms alone won't do it. Depo-Provera, Norplant and the new birth control injection being developed in India are not a complete answer...

No, government is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions...RU 486 and conventional abortions. Even if we make birth control as ubiquitous as sneakers and junk food, there will still be unplanned pregnancies. There have been about 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery ...and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario...

We don't need more cannon fodder. We don't need more parishioners, We don't need more cheap labor. We don't need more poor babies.

So, Weddington's solution to the "problem" of the poor is to convince them to use birth control, and when that fails, provide them with government-funded abortions. Planned Parenthood has taken this strategy to heart, putting the vast majority of their abortion clinics in inner city neighborhoods, resulting in a disproportionate number of abortions among African Americans and Hispanics. So, even though African Americans makeup only 12% of the U.S. population, they account for 35% of all abortions.



Ok, Ok, so I took the liberty to replace the word slavery with the word abortion in the speech and letter of Abraham Lincoln. I did not replace any word that Ron Weddington used in his letter to Bill Clinton. I believe that there has not been a change of heart and attitude by the donkey party from the time of Abraham Lincoln with respect to the barely educated poor segments of our country. There has been a change of strategy. The strategy then was to make good use of them in the same way good use was made of livestock. In our more modern urban world the strategy is for them to just die out by not reproducing.