Analogy is always tricky logic. Rarely is the analogy perfect.  Paul Gottfried has demonstrated correctly where the analogy fails.  Where the analogy is correct: Supporters of both evils argue: “it’s my property, I can do with it as I wish.” No one in he US defended slavery the way Aristotle defended it-- that certain human beings (for Aristotle,the retarded) simply merited by nature being treated as slaves. Aristotle did oppose slavery as it was practiced in his culture. Aristotle might have defended the child-killing of the retarded; he would have opposed the child-killing of the genius.  But the pro-death crowd generally avoids arguing that the fetus is an Untermensch. Both slavery and killing children were and are defended by shear self-interest.

Smart politics builds coalitions.  If I consider killing children the supreme evil of our time (and I do), then I want as many on my side as possible.  Including “liberals”. Of course, there are some who don’t consider it the supreme evil, and others who are opportunists who want to do their own ritualized reaching out. 

And to Sam Franciscans: Were Dixie free, child-killing would be illegal there.

@Sid

It is not a question that Aristotle might have defended
child killing. He just accepted it as a fact of life that
did not deserve to be commented on. Athenians dumped
unwanted babies in the trash, mainly girls, if they did
not fit into their household economy, and Aristotle was
content with that.

There is indeed an analogy between slavery and abortion,
the attitude of those who said “If you do not like abortion
do not have one”, which is comparable “if you do not like
slavery do not own a slave”, in both cases, an appeal
to let those who were opposed to an institution to keep
it going for the sake of those who believed in it.

It involved the same argument “It is my body and I do
what I want with it”, and “It is my property, and I do
as I want with it”. Both appeals to the Supreme Court
rulings. Both involved cultural relativism, one that
said that whether slavery was right or wrong depended
on geography, and one in which we may end up with the
same result with abortion, some places where it is OK,
and some places where it is not, all based on the capricious
detail on where one happened to be.

Of course, there is the difference that the descendants
of the slaves are around us, and they have issues, which
may or not be worthy, but by the fact that they are around
have to be paid attention to.  There are no descendents
for aborted children, so they can be more easily ignored.

Thus is seems to be a good idea to use the analogy to
have a set of descendants feel sympathy for a group
that did not have descendants to speak for them.

Adriana’s case for the slave analogy in dealing with
abortion simply doesn’t work. Blacks and their
liberal leaders do not accept the analogy in any way;
in fact “civil rights” spokesmen rage against anyone
who is “racist” enough to bring it up. Moreover,
saying that both acts dehumanize those to whom they
are done merely offers a general judgment about
the effects of doing something to someone of which
we don’t approve.Giving some kid a gift of coke or
a subscription to SCREW would exemplify Adriana’s
prohibition as easily as the practice of slavery.The
traditional Christian view, found in Aquinas as well
as in that proto-Protestant Augustine, was that
slavery may have been a necessary evil.

@Dr. Gottfried:

That an analogy is not accepted by someone does not make
it invalid. It may be that they find it unpalatable
because they are beholden to abortion supporters, and
you are asking them to reconsider their political
alliances.  Now why would you want to accommodate them
in their reluctance? Are you unwilling to chip away at
the adversary?

Yes, I can work with the example of giving a kid coke
or a subscription to SCREW magazine “If you think tht it
is bad, do not give it to your kid, or do not give it
to kids yourself, and leave us to do the distributing
to those who want it” (by the way, you meant coke or
cocaine?). 

My analogy is to the excuses people find to keep on doing
what is wrong, and the way they attempt to paralyze those
who point it out. The issues may not be the same, but
the excuses are the same, and that might give us pause.

It teaches us, if nothing else, that such excuses are no
good and that we may discard them, and listen to more
intelligent arguments.

As to Aristotle finding slavery a necessary evil, I
imagine that he saw infanticide a necessary evil too,
only he did not bother to comment about it, since the
babies exposed to die were useless females, anyway.

It was not just Aristotle who defended slavery
but Christian theologians,
who opposed infanticide. Perhaps the intended targets
are not impressed with the analogy because it doesn’t
work very well. Arguably there is a
hierarchy of bad as well as good things; and while
giving out pornography and buying slaves may not be
commendable acts, they do not seem to approach
in their gravity murdering an eight-month fetus.
What we have done is to reach for a PC analogy rather
than for one that conveys the real ugliness of what
the feminists insist is a “woman’s right to choose.”

Dr. Gottfried, I don’t disagree with Adriana’s point
and I understand what you are saying; however, I am
concerned by your ambiguous statement,("In the case of late-term abortion, where one is dealing with an empirical human being, only a feminist lunatic or a sleazy politician like Hillary Clinton or the “moderate” Joe Lieberman would deny the obvious.)” What about the six week old embryo in its
mother’s womb, is that an “empirical human being”?
Maybe, you could explain when human life begins, at
conception or when it “looks” like a human baby?  The
reason I ask, is because it seems you are saying that
any stage before the “empirical” stage can be aborted.
Is that your position?

Let’s define slavery:  When person A’s body is the physical property of person B, and thus (1) person A’s body can be bought and sold as are animals and machines and furniture; and (2)person A has no right to his own happiness, and his existence (or non-existence) is only ancillary to person B’s happiness.  The definition of slavery and the 2nd consequence apply also to child-killing.

Slavery and child-killing are both so deeply depersonalizing and such intrinsic evils that to say which is worse is of little importance. Were there any Christian theologians who supported slavery, so much the worse for them.  A systematic Thomist, and a thoroughgoing Christian, follow Boethius who follows Roman Law: persona est sui juris (non alterius juris) et alteri incommunicabilis.

One reader may have picked up on my less than
certain sense that abortion in the first trimester
may be less than homicide. I can not
say with absolute certitude that the fetus at the
beginning of its rudimentary existence seems fully
human in the same way that the fetus becomes later
on in its development. By the time the last
trimester arrives, the fetus can exist outside of the
womb and it has all the physical and mental
attributes of a child who has already been born.
Therefore anyone who approves of the destruction of
the fetus at this late point is accepting the murder
of what is a fully identifiable human being. Although
Old Testament, by the way, does not treat the
destruction of a fetus with the same severity as it
does homicide, nonetheless, I think that any attempt
to limit abortion at any stage is to be commended.
For the record, I have never encountered a law
restricting abortion that I didn’t approve of. And
despite my skepticism about treating early-term
abortion as homicide, I would never vote for a
politician who was pro-choice.

While slavery CAN be de-humanizing, it is not
necessarily so.  One can be both a slave and have
happiness.

HOWEVER, one can not be an aborted human and be
“happy”.  As a matter of fact, an aborted human
has NO feelings.  Aborted means “murdered”.  Dead
people don’t “feel” much of anything.

Holding another human being in bondage is in no way
comparable to abortion/murder.  It’s a nonsensical
comparison, much like comparing stealing a lady’s
underwear with raping her.  Sure, stealing her underwear
is kind of “weird”, and MAY be associated with rape for
certain people, but in no way should both acts be
treated as “equal”.

@Andy

On the other hand, slavery means insulting the notion that
man was created in the image of God for a prolonged
time.

Once you commit murder, your victims is dead and you
can no longer inflict harm on it.

You can inflict harm on your slave on a daily basis.

I wonder if you read my post, in other thread of the
case of a God fearing Christian man who bought in the
open market a slave, who was also a God fearing Christian
woman, and did not think anything wrong about selling
her to a brothel, because after all, it was a wise
investment.

Is that the way to treat something that was created in
the image of God?

“While slavery CAN be de-humanizing, it is not
necessarily so.”

This fails to address my argument. There are three choices: In dealing with persona est sui juris non alterius juris, one must
1. either attack the predicate and deny that each person is sui juris, and would be thus alterius juris, and thus argue as do all child-killers; or
2. one must attack the subject and deny that someone is a person (and would be thus an Untermensch), and thus argue as some child-killers; or
3. one must agree that each and every person is sui juris, and thus slavery (by definition always a violation of persona est sui juris) is always dehumanizing—as is child-killing. Of course only the 3rd choice is correct.

“One can be both a slave and have
happiness”.
This also ignores my argument. If a person were not sui juris, then he would not be entitled by his nature as a person to any happiness whatsoever—at most he must settle for crumbs from the table. 

To compare slavery to stealing underwear means either that one needs a course either in ethics or in analogy. The woeful performance of Gringo Kinder on the analogy section of the SAT provides no comfort.

He who argues on behalf of slavery (or child-killing) as morally just and natural needs to tell us if he’d approve of his own just and natural enslavement to another—either of his free will or by coercion.  The Golden Rule and the categorical imperative trump again.

He who argues on behalf of slavery… as morally just and natural needs to tell us if he’d approve of his own just and natural enslavement to another...

This is a lousy argument against slavery.  All the opponent need do is cite the OT passages that permit slavery.  Since revealed law trumps natural law, he wins.  I’m not endorsing slavery, mind you, but your argument proposes a Kantian moral universe that conservative often don’t agree with.

Were there any Christian theologians who supported slavery, so much the worse for them.

Robert Lewis Dabney and James Thornwell were men of their time, but they were better men than us. Lay off.  Nobody is calling for revived slavery.

Well, I heard Mister Cundiff sing about her/Well, I heard Ol’ Sid put her down/Well, I hope Sid Cundiff will remember/A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow…

The point is:

Slavery and murder are two completely different sins.

To equate the two is ridiculous.

Slavery is “bad”, but murder is worse.

@Andy Capp

Sin is sin, no matter how you wish distinguish.

Sin leads to sin.  Just because it is a different sin
does not mean that it does not have a common root.

In the case of slavery the root is looking at a fellow
human being and seeing a commodity, not, as Saint Peter
Claver reminds us, someone who was redeemed by the
precious blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Seen that way.,
murder and slavery are acts that show contempt for that
precious blood.

Also, if you own the woman, and you own the children
she produces, why not abort her pregnancies so that
she does not spend months in an unproductive state
instead of working for you? Or kill the child because
at this point it is drain on your resources? Once a
human being becomes a commodity, then none of the
legal prohibitions as to what youc cannot do a human
being apply.

In the case of slavery the root is looking at a fellow human being and seeing a commodity, not, as Saint Peter Claver reminds us, someone who was redeemed by the
precious blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is Universalism, one of those doctrines Rome allegedly opposes, yet tolerates.

Ohhh, good Lord, what bad theology and moralizing people.

Slavery is NOT a sin.  Never was. The Early Christian Church NEVER NEVER condemned slavery. In the Ecumencal councils, any slave that wanted to be a cleric had to get permission from his owner.  The catholic orthodox apostolic Church has never condemned slavery. Slavery is NOT morally wrong. The Old Testament actually has laws that guide it. So NO slavery is not wrong. It is a progressive leftist idea that it is! I fail to see how any of you are conservatives at all! The Eastern Orthodox Church has never condemned slavery! Nor will God ever! NOWHERE in Scripture is slavery condemned!  So where you people get your training from, I don’t know because it ain’t Holy Tradition!!!!

There is NO analogy between slavery and abortion.  Slavery is an INSTITUTION like marriage, like the military, like the family, like any other institution.  An Institution is NOT a personal act like abortion. Abortion is NOT an institution but a personal act. Abortion is ending human life. Solely on that basis is it immoral.

And yes, Novak got it wrong. There were no rebels in Kansas. It was factions of liberal heretics, the abolitionists, against the Old Order Christians.

Everytime I come on this site, I just flabbergasted at you so-called “conservatives”.  You are NOT conservatives---you are all progessives. You are all politically correct--hence Marxist--None of you uphold the Old Order. None of you know anything about Natural Law. You people are just the greatest bamboozolers out there. You are all so self-decieved. You people are NOT conservatives.  Maybe you are neo-cons, those “Progressive Conservatives” but you ain’t conservatives at all!

@Peter Ramus

Since the Catholic church has

a) canonized men and women of all ethic groups, which
means that the faithful do pray to them to intercede for
their souls, whatever the ethnic group of the faithful
may be

b) created cardinals of each various ethnic groups, all
those cardinals being able to vote in the conclave to
elect the next pope, and able to be elected Pope too
(actually, in the last conclave there was a possibility
that the next Pope should be an African)

That tell you what the position of the Catholic church
is.

But what do you find so offensive? The reminder that
we are redeemed all by the blood of Jesus Christ? Do you
cling to the idea that you will be saved by your own
effort? The reminder that, no matter what your race is,
we are all equally in need of grace? The reminder that
racial differences between men and women are but a small
chasm compared to the difference between us and God?

@Mr. Wheeler

Indeed I did not know how much I missed you and your
erudite rants.

Please tell me more about the real Catholic Church, the
true one. What is your opinion of the (according to you)
false Pope John Paul II?

Adrianna, Political Correctness is not Christian dogma.

I stated elsewhere Catholic means universal, all men are equal in the eyes of God. St Paul said ‘there are no more Jew or Gentile, no more slave or free no more male or female we are all one in Jesus Christ’.Read Mitt Brenender Sorge by Pope Pius the Eleventh to see how the Catholic Church respects all the great variety of mankind.

1. re: Wheeler on slavery:  I recall the Book of Proverbs saying something like “nothing is more deadly than a proverb in the mouth of a fool”.  I respectfully move, Mr. Speaker, to strike “fool” and replace with “ignoramus” and to insert after “proverb” “and a Bible verse”—a verse utterly divorced from context, ignorant of the Hebrew and Greek word for “slave”, ignorant of the cultural context of the 2nd Millennium B.C. or the AD first centuries, importing the 19th Century Gringo practice of slavery back into ancient times, etc. etc. 

2. Jack gets it right. Welcome, Jack!

Dear Dr. Gottfried,
In you oblique reference to my questions, you hedged
in your answer.  Tell me, if a human sperm cell
fertilizes a human egg, is the resulting zygote human,
no matter how physically unrecognizable it is compared
to a new born baby or a twenty-one year old
adult?  I fail to comprehend anyone’s denying that
the zygote, or the blastula or any other stage of
human development in the womb is not a human being.
Since,the nature of a human being is body and soul,
then abortion at any stage of pregnancy is murder.

And Jack, St. Paul said that slaves who became Christians would have to serve their masters even better. Anybody that teaches a slave to runaway is anathemitized. This is Canon Law. This is teaching of Holy Tradition. If you are too panzy to uphold Truth, then, go be a neo-con.  Being a conservative is not about the easy road. Conservativism is NOT about re-writing history and it is re-writing of history to say that Slavery is wrong! It is NOT the teaching of the Church.  All Abolitionists are anathemitized--heretics--going to hell. Being a conservative is not tea time and it is not go-along to get along.  A Conservative stands for the Truth, and if you can’t handle the truth and can’t uphold it---then don’t play at being a conservative.

i suggest you would make a nice slave.We all have slaves and masters in our background.The Christian religion has put an end to slavery all over the world.Rome, Greece,Great Briton,the USA and Brazil for a few examples.Several popes wrote bulls against slavery and excommunicated slave owners.Slavery is clearly against the whole idea of Christianity.Thats why Christians have ended chattel slavery and why heathens like Hitler and Stalin love it

I will offer an area of truce.

Slavery, in 21st century America is “wrong” because it goes against our civil laws.

In 1843 South Carolina, I would not have picked up arms for the case of abolition.  Fighting against slavery with weapons in 1843, for example, would have been a sin.

Slavery is something that is “institutionalized” by society, and Christianity tells us to accept society for what it is: that is, to paraphrase God, give Caesar what is his.

I think, given these definitions, we can say that to hold slaves in 21st America is a “sin”, but to hold slaves in 1843 South Carolina was not, just as holding slaves in 2007 Sudan is not a “sin”, nor is not letting women, or anyone else for that matter, in 2007 Arabia vote for “king” a “sin”.

Venial sins aren’t constant, nor should they be throughout the world.

What should be constant are those things that we know as mortal sins, blasphemy, fraud, theft, murder, treason, etc.

Re “slavery”, I have no objection to the 13th Amendment prohibition of “involuntary servitude”, but one wonders just how “voluntary” most kinds of servitude are today in an almost totally bureaucratised and hyper-abstract economy in which entrepreneurialism - the real kind, not its parvenu stepchild, “salesmanship” or “marketing” (even more unreal today than it was in the time of the Fuller Brush Man and Avon Lady) - has become almost impossible.  Today’s working class might enjoy more material comfort than the slaves of the Old South, but how much more “free” are they really?

Alright, I admit that’s a bit hyperbolic.
But then compare the liberties and social status of today’s working class against those of ancient Rome’s working class, aka “slaves”.  At least they - or many of them - enjoyed something approximating family relations and reciprocal loyalty with their masters.  But today’s American working class, by and large enjoy neither reciprocal loyalty with their masters (and the personal dignity and social status contingent upon it), NOR much real economic freedom, nor much authentic personal property other than what they in effect “rent”, including their mortgaged houses.

I think a thousand years from now (I’m an optimist about the survival of our civilisation, and of all good things, in the LONG run) the humiliating, untstable and degrading conditions of today’s American working class will be compared unfavourably to those of ancient Rome.
The material poverty of Rome’s servant class (that’s a more accurate and more significant term than “slaves") was, for its time, not really worse than that of Americans today, but the spiritual poverty of America’s servant class is arguably more horrific than that of the Roman slaves.

And here’s a suggested - well not “truce”, but a different way to frame the issue of abortion and “murder” - and I’m bracing myself for flames from both sides, but here goes:

As a LEGAL term, “murder” is NOT the same thing as “homicide.” Homicide is the killing of a human being, and some homicides are legal, eg killing in self-defense, and killing an enemy under arms in wartime.  “Murder” in Anglo-American law has traditionally been defined as the:

1.  unlawful killing of
2.  a human being WHO HAS BEEN BORN,
3.  with malice (specific intent to kill or to do grievous bodily harm)

In other words, as a matter of law, abortion is not “murder”, and would not be “murder” even if outlawed.  The operative words are “has been born.”

However, that does not mean the law does not acknowledge unborn children as “human beings.” If anything, the opposite is true; the law already acknowledges fetuses as Human - otherwise the provision, “who has been born” would never have been included in the definition of murder.

Therefore, something I think the issue of abortion ought to be reframed to emphasis the Humanity of the unborn, instead of the (legally incorrect, and NOT because of Roe v Wade) more disputable argument that “abortion is murder.”

In other words I think pro-lifers might get more mileage in the long run, and make more effective arguments, if they/we changed the slogan to, “abortion is homicide.” That’s much harder for the pro-abortionists to contradict, and it really gets to the heart of the matter:
acknowledging the dignity and inviolability of ALL Humans, no matter how weak or “expendable” they might seem to be.

The best summary of the Christian (Catholic) view on slavery as as
institution comes from The Catholic Encyclopedia (older
edition):

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14039a.htm

The article, by Fr. James Fox, comes from volume XIV.

While Christians (and the Church) have continuously
worked both for the ameliorate the condition of slaves, and
to, where and when practical, to end the practice, itself,
we need to bear in mind this essential citation from the
above-mentioned article:

“The fact that slavery, tempered with many humane restrictions, was permitted under the Mosaic law would have sufficed to prevent the institution form being condemned by Christian teachers as absolutely immoral. They, following the example of St. Paul, implicitly accept slavery as not in itself incompatible with the Christian Law. The apostle counsels slaves to obey their masters, and to bear with their condition patiently. This estimate of slavery continued to prevail till it became fixed in the systematized ethical teaching of the schools; and so it remained without any conspicuous modification till towards the end of the eighteenth century. We may take as representative de Lugo’s statement of the chief argument offered in proof of the thesis that slavery, apart from all abuses, is not in itself contrary to the natural law:

<Slavery consists in this, that a man is obliged, for his whole life, to devote his labour and services to a master. Now as anybody may justly bind himself, for the sake of some anticipated reward, to give his entire services to a master for a year, and he would in justice be bound to fulfil this contract, why may not he bind himself in like manner for a longer period, even for his entire lifetime, an obligation which would constitute slavery? (De Justitia et Jure, disp. VI, sec. 2. no. 14.)> “

The final few paragraphs of the article read:

“Even granting that slavery, when attended with a due regard for the rights of the slave, is not in itself intrinsically wrong, there still remains the important question of the titles by which a master can justly own a slave. The least debatable one, voluntary acceptance of slavery, we have already noticed. Another one that was looked upon as legitimate was purchase. Although it is against natural justice to treat a person as a mere commodity or thing of commerce, nevertheless the labour of a man for his whole lifetime is something that may be lawfully bought and sold. Owing to the exalted notion that prevailed in earlier times about the patria potestas, a father was granted the right to sell his son into slavery, if he could not otherwise relieve his own dire distress. But the theologians held that if he should afterwards be able to do so, the father was bound to redeem the slave, and the master the was bound to set him free if anybody offered to repay him the price he had paid. To sell old or worn-out slaves to anybody who was likely to prove a cruel master, to separate by sale husband and wife, or a mother and her little children, was looked upon as wrong and forbidden. Another title was war. If a man forfeited his life so that he could be justly put to death, this punishment might be committed into the mitigated penalty of slavery, or penal servitude for life. On the same principle that slavery is a lesser evil than death, captives taken in war, who, according to the ethical ideas of the jus gentium, might lawfully be put to death by the victors, were instead reduced to slavery. Whatever justification this practice may have had in the jus gentium of former ages, none could be found for it now.

When slavery prevailed as part of the social organization and the slaves were ranked as property, it seemed not unreasonable that the old juridical maxim, Partus sequitur ventrem, should be accepted as peremptorily settling the status of children born in slavery. But it would be difficult to find any justification for this title in the natural law, except on the theory that the institution of slavery was, in certain conditions, necessary to the permanence of the social organization. An insufficient reason frequently offered in defence of it was that the master acquired a right to the children as compensation for the expense he incurred in their support, which could not be provided by the mother who possessed nothing of her own. Nor is there much cogency in the other plea, i.e. that a person born in slavery was presumed to consent tacitly to remaining in that condition, as there was no way open to him to enter any other. It is unnecessary to observe that the practice of capturing savages or barbarians for the purpose of making slaves of them has always been condemned as a heinous offence against justice, and no just title could be created by this procedure. Was it lawful for owners to retain in slavery the descendants of those who had been made slaves in this unjust way? The last conspicuous Catholic moralist who posed this question when it was not merely a theoretical one, Kenrick, resolves it in the affirmative on the ground that lapse of time remedies the original defect in titles when the stability of society and the avoidance of grave disturbances demand it.”

Abortion is not only worse than slavery,
it is also worse than the holocaust.

In other words, as a matter of law, abortion is not “murder”, and would not be “murder” even if outlawed.  The operative words are “has been born.”

Correction - as a matter of “positive” law it may not be murder.  As a matter of natural law, it is.

“The real reason that our anti-abortionists . . .”

Quite right.  Liberalism, leftism, progressivism, whatever it wants to call itself, is a white-hating genocidal racist movement, that is its salient characteristic, and the central issue of Western politics today.  Whatever it once stood for has been dumped for the naked power that cultural warfare and racial politics have brought.  What passes for conservatism these days is simply too gutless, subservient and corrupt to confront the dominant left on this central issue, and as the years have rolled by their failure to confront the left on its racism has legitimized it.  It’s not surprising that anti-abortionists plug into the accepted moral terms of the day. 

I’ve seldom seen abortion compared to slavery, though, it is far more often called a form of genocide against blacks.  The same argument applies, even more so.