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Slavery and Abortion Born from the same Idea

  • gpatgamma
  • Aug 9
  • 8 min read

Following the Science into a Dead End

 

              My thanks to all those people who have spent hours heaping vitriol on the founding fathers of the United States as racists and hypocrites.  Had they not spent that energy on a very superficial examination of the context of the times and attempted to apply 21st-century morality to the 18th century in the name of progressivism I might not have found the inspiration to do my research.

              While examining the 1700s science and what was considered “settled science” (always fascinating when a progressive uses that term as if all future discoveries are impossible), and the alleged hypocrisy of men who could write that “all men are created equal” and still hold slaves, I found an interesting parallel to abortion.  Essentially holding people as slaves without guilt hinges on classifying those held as slaves as not “human”, just as abortion justifies ending a fetus’s life because the fetus is not a human.  We all understand that killing humans is murder, just as we know that holding other humans in chattel slavery is wicked and immoral.    Claiming that chattel slavery is about property rights has the same moral value as claiming that abortion is about reproductive rights, or the even more insidious phrase “abortion is healthcare” – certainly not for the fetus.

              During the COVID pandemic, there was a very loud group, largely on the left side of the political spectrum, who demanded that everyone “follow the science” when it came to masks and vaccinations.  This group was able to ignore any contradictions to their beliefs and even demand that laws be passed to penalize or imprison those who found holes in the claims of “ the science.”  Much of the current disinformation industry was built in that time to suppress any debate on what many of the most strident supporters claimed was settled science.   As the scientific facts about COVID, the vaccinations, and the efficacy of masking become clearer and analysis continues, it appears that some of the naysayers were more correct in their assessment than the government-funded scientists and their followers.  One might legitimately ask if that situation about COVID existed in 21st century,  what was considered the “settled science” about race in the 18th century?  Even though today science has proven that much of the race science in the 18th century was incorrect and perhaps even rooted in deep biases, might it have had the same effect as COVID science in the 21st century?   Might it have created a group of people who deeply believed what the scientists of the day told them about race much like the true believers in COVID science? 

              In the 18th century two theories about the human race’s origins were under debate; polygenism and monogenism.    Polygenism is a theory of human origins takes the view that humans originated from different sources (polygenesis).  This view contradicts the Biblical creation story that implies that the human race is drawn from a common ancestor.   Polygenism is opposite to the idea of monogenism which posits a single origin of humanity.  From the late 1700’s until the mid 1800’s polygenism was considered settled science.  There were several prominent scientists who conducted studies and experiments to prove that mankind was a collection of different species. 

Josiah Nott and George Gliddon’s 800-page illustrated volume, Types of Mankind, reproduced the work of Louis Agassiz and Samuel Morton, spreading racist views to a popular audience.  This work was published at the height of polygenism and was considered a scientific foundation for polygenism.  The work sold so well that nine editions were printed. Slave owners, like many of the current COVID science “true believers”, found justification for their beliefs about slavery and used this new “science” to defend it.[i]   It sounds eerily familiar to those of us who listened to the demands that the COVID unvaccinated be punished.

In the book The History of Jamaica, published in 1774 in England, Edward Long wrote that blacks were subhumans; excerpts were reprinted in the U.S. in 1788. In History of Jamaica, Long wrote that were animals and his book included a racial hierarchy where blacks were somewhere between Europeans and monkeys. Long and Dr. Charles Whites’ Account of the Regular Gradation in Man in 1799 provided the “empirical science” for the species theory.[ii]

In the mid 1800’s, a Philadelphia physician named Samuel G. Morton collected and measured hundreds of human skulls to confirm that there were differences among the races in particular, a difference in brain size.  His theory was that brain size is an indicator of intelligence and the smaller skulls would indicate less intelligence.  Today’s science has shown that brain size has a weak to moderate correlation to intelligence. [iii] Morton conducted systematic large-scale experiments that made him a pioneer of American science in studies of race and physical anthropology.

 Morton was a staunch proponent of polygenism. Morton’s large collection of human skulls from all around the world lead him to believe that mankind had different origins.   Morton developed tables from his experiments that he believed would allow him to identify any skull’s racial origin simply by measuring it.  Morton assigned brain capacity based on his experiments in this order;  the highest brain capacity to Europeans-with the English highest of all. Second was the Chinese, third was Southeast Asians and Polynesians, fourth was American Indians, and the smallest brain capacity was assigned to Africans and Australian aborigines. Morton’s extensice collection of skulls is now in the museum of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.

Morton wrote Crania Americana (1839), An Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America and Catalogue of Skulls of Man (1840), and Crania Egyptica (1844).[iv]  Morton although a scientist made the case for black inferiority to bolster U.S. Secretary of State John Calhoun’s efforts to negotiate the annexation of Texas as a slave state. This use of science to control and subjugate other human beings illustrates the danger of assuming that science is ever settled.

       In the wake of these scientific claims about the inferiority of blacks, many African American scholars entered the debate.  Frederick Douglass entered the fray and challenged the scientists' findings. In an 1854 address Douglass stated that by making the enslaved a character fit only for slavery, these scientists were promulgating the most extreme form of human oppression.  He added, that by providing a “scientific” logic for slavery, slaveowners can excuse themselves from the horrors of chattel slavery.  His words fell on deaf ears as slave owners continued to parrot the settled science that proved that blacks were subhuman and thus on the same level as other animals used for profit.

The foregoing is not intended as any kind of justification for slavery.  It simply sets the stage for what scientific knowledge was available to the founding fathers as they considered holding slaves.  For anyone to say in the 21st century that “they should have known better” ignores the power of science to shape culture and attitudes.  One need only look at the ferocious attacks by not only private individuals but also the US government against anyone who said COVID science could be wrong.  Or perhaps the vicious smears of anyone who challenges climate change- more apparently “settled science.”

Let’s turn to abortion now that we have established the scientific context for why the people in the 17th and 18th centuries thought blacks were a separate and distinct species.

The opinions about the “personhood” of a fetus center around two arguments – when does a fetus become a person; and because the fetus is dependent on the mother for life, until birth, the termination of a pregnancy is a mother’s absolute right. 

First things first, when does science say that a fetus becomes a person and is entitled to all the rights of any other human being?  Some argue that only upon birth after a proper gestation period.  That argument is based on the baby leaving the mother’s body and no longer requiring the placental connection.  At the opposite end is the argument that life begins at conception.  There is consensus (80%) among the American people that biologists are the most qualified people to determine when life begins. [v] Biologists almost universally agree that life begins at conception.  A 2018 study revealed,   “Overall, 95% of all biologists affirmed the biological view that a human's life begins at fertilization (5212 out of 5502)”[vi]  It seems that ignoring science when it suits a preference or ideological narrative is accepted behavior.   One might call it cafeteria science, pick out what you like and discard the rest.

So, if human life begins at conception, why do so many people argue that abortion is an acceptable means of birth control?  Three arguments from pro-choice advocates are the foundation.  First, the connection of the fetus to the mother through the umbilical cord makes the fetus totally dependent on the mother’s body and thus cannot be considered an independent person.   Second, the elusive concept of “personhood” is invoked.  Even if a fetus is a human life it has no attributes of a person.   Essentially this argument is that the fetus has no sense of self or others – in other words, no “person-ality”.   Personhood is tied to a sense of a unique identity.  One could ask at what point does a fetus gain a unique sense of who they are?  Scientists who have performed invasive experiments on animal fetuses believe that the fetus exists in one of two stages of sleeplike unconsciousness. The argument continues that if fertilized eggs in IVF treatments are destroyed this is just like an abortion yet is not considered murder.  However, frozen IVF fertilized eggs are not capable of entering the sleeplike state of fetus development.   This raises the question if there is differentiation between a fertilized egg and a fetus.  Thirdly, a woman must have sovereign control of her body and denying the choice of abortion infringes on that right.  (It is important to note that abortion as a medical procedure to save a mother’s life or reverse the consequences of violent unwanted sexual acts is a moral choice and should not be restricted.) 

All of these arguments can be reduced to one idea – a fetus may be alive but it is not a person.   The supporting framework is that the woman is a person and thus controls the fate of the non-person.    It starts to sound eerily like the justification for slavery.  Blacks may be alive but they are not “persons” and thus slave owners who are persons can control the fate of the non-person.

In the first case science was used to justify the immoral act of enslaving fellow humans.  In the second case science is bent a bit to allow women to meet their needs.  No one discounts the agony and pain that women and men go through in deciding to abort a child.  That does not alter the argument that defining the fetus as non-person is required.    

 Today we see riots and tearing down of statues to show our disdain for the cruel men of the early United States who held slaves.   Pastors preach sermons and writers blast the founding fathers of the United States as unfit for admiration because they held slaves.    As science continues to progress and technology advances to be able to measure more closely the growth of a baby in the womb, could the day come when science pronounces that a fetus at some early time in the pregnancy is self aware?   If that happens will riots and mobs be demanding that all the “pro-abortion” celebrities be torn from their media-built thrones?  Will people demand punishment for all the “murders” committed in the name of “reproductive healthcare?”   Will abortion clinics be burned to the ground?

 Reasonable people hope that that will not be the case.  The current fad of interpreting events of the past through the lenses of the present is unhealthy in many ways.  Least of which is the fueling of continued division in the United States when unity is demanded to cope with an uncertain future.  Before you offer a criticism of a founder consider what he knew at the time – what did the science tell him?  Offer that same grace to all those who lived in our past, if you can do that, there may be hope for a future where we spend less energy demonizing those who went before us.

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 
 
 

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