Anniversary of Dred Scott Case (1857), Reminder of Connection Between Race and Abortion

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 6, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Today is the anniversary of the infamous Dred Scott decision and one leading African-American pro-life advocate tells LifeNews.com that she is reminded of how some black Americans aren't considered persons today.

Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, notes the irony of the connection between race and abortion.

"One hundred and fifty seven years ago today, Dred Scott, a black slave, petitioned the Supreme Court for his freedom, but was denied," Gardner recounts. "In the case known as the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that slaves--even freed slaves, and all their descendants, had no rights protected by the Constitution and that states had no right to abolish slavery."

"The reasoning in Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade is nearly identical," she explains.

"In both cases the Court stripped all rights from a class of human beings and reduced them to nothing more than the property of others," Gardner says.

Gardner says the 1857 decision determined that African-Americans were not fully human and that they were the property of their owners and therefore he had no rights at all. Dred Scott was not deemed "fully human," so he could be bought, sold or even killed at the owner's discretion, she contends.

"In the Roe v. Wade case of 1973 the Supreme Court said the same thing," Gardner says.

"A baby is the property of his/her mother -- and that he/she is not fully human, therefore he/she has no rights at all. The Court stated that because an unborn baby is not deemed 'fully human' he/she can be bought, sold or even killed at the mother's whim," the pro-life black leader tells LifeNews.com.

Gardner says the Supreme Court says unborn children are now the same "beings of an inferior order" that the justices considered Blacks to be over a century ago.

She concludes: "We must all come to realize that if we are the truly an America that holds life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness so dear -- then we must obliterate the scourge of abortion from our midst otherwise we are no better than the those who perpetrate the conflict in Darfur, or any other country where human beings are enslaved, butchered or denied their rights just because they are meeker or weaker."

Gardner is the president of the National Black Pro- Life Union headquartered in Washington.


Related web sites:
National Black Pro-Life Union - www.nationalblackprolifeunion.com

Dred Scott