In the 1997 movie Amistad about the true story of African slaves who mutinied on the slave ship carrying them to America, President John Quincy Adams delivers a stemwinder to the United Sates Supreme Court on behalf of the slaves:
“James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington… John Adams. We’ve long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so, we might acknowledge that our individuality, which we so, so revere, is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an… an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But, we’ve come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding… that who we are IS who we were. We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war? Then let it come. And when it does, may it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution.”
We fought that Civil War not long after Adams spoke those words, a war finally precipitated by the same Supreme Court in the infamous Dred Scott decision, a war that ended the national tragedy that was slavery.
That same Supreme Court went on to enshrine in law the segregation laws of the South in Plessy v. Ferguson, enshrine eugenic sterilization of the developmentally disabled under Buck v. Bell, enshrine concentration camps for Japanese-American citizens during WWII in Koramatsu v. United States, and finally enshrined abortion in Roe v. Wade.
Again and again the injustice of this Court has poisoned the body politic and torn this nation asunder. Again and again people have marched, and clashed, and spilled one another’s blood in senseless fratricide.
Justice has always prevailed, but never before the effusion of much blood. So it is with abortion.
In New York State, a bill may come to vote before next Friday’s recess of the legislature, the so-called “Reproductive Health & Privacy Protection Act”
(“RHAPP”) would:
• Promote late-term abortions of fully-formed infants
• Authorize non-physicians to perform abortions
• Lift the current age restriction on over-the-counter sales of the “morning-
after pill”
• Thwart any efforts to involve parents in the abortion decisions of their
children
In addition, it could:
• Compel hospitals, including Catholic hospitals, to allow abortion
• Compel schools and charitable agencies to facilitate abortion
More from the New York State Catholic Conference Here.
It is clear that we are in the midst of a civil war over abortion, which is only the tip of the spear for the Culture of Death. It has deadened moral sensibilities with its language of radical autonomy. The radical nature of this autonomy has crept into how we view the elderly, infirm and handicapped–as encumbrances to be dispatched if they threaten our ability to realize our ‘potential’.
Such potency has always been rooted in the communal soil of family and church. The fruits of what we ‘do’ have always redounded to the benefit of the family and community. Now however, the self is viewed as answerable only to itself. Family and community are no longer one’s primary means of self-definition so much as a utilitarian means toward a narcissistic end. This is what we have been enshrining as law for five decades. This is the face of the newest civil war, one which has claimed over 52 million human lives. Compare that to a little over 600,000 lives lost in the American Civil War.
The enemies of life have doubled down with such sweeping legislation as is pending in New York. We must meet them on the legislative battle-field and make our politicians hear our voices and fear our wrath at the voting booth more than they fear the opposition’s.
John Quincy Adams appealed to the character and wisdom of the founders, one of whom, John Adams, was his father. We too appeal to the wisdom of our founders, and our forbears in the abolitionist movement. We must present such a positive and noble lineage to our legislators and ask that they too join this lineage which celebrates the authentic freedom of the human person at its very root: The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The latter two are not possible without the first.
In the decades to come, our posterity too will look back and join in Adams’ words:
“We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding… that who we are IS who we were.”
We have before us today the power and ability to determine for our posterity who we were.
We should choose courageously and wisely.
Coming Home 
The Japanese internment camps were indeed a civil travesty, but weren’t quite on par with “concentration camps,” a term that usually refers to German camps for extermination.
And hopefully very soon, the Supreme Court will be ruling on gay marriage, and reaffirming the “authentic freedom of the human person.”
L.,
Not to quibble, but when Japanese American citizens, for no crime other than their ancestral ethnicity and origins, are stripped of their freedom, stripped of their homes, stripped of their businesses, stripped of their money and CONCENTRATED into camps behind barbed wire and forced to remain at gunpoint, such a camp is rightly called a concentration camp.
I don’t traffic in Disneyesque euphemisms such as internment camps for such ugly and inhumane conduct.
“Internment camp” is a “Disneyesque euphemism?” I have to disagree with that — although I would agree that calling an extermination camp a “concentration camp” probably fits.
Through my long work with the elderly, I’ve been privileged to know many survivors of both German concentration camps and Japanese-American internment camps. More survived the latter than the former, for obvious reasons.
It is your blog, and you can call the camps whatever you wish. I only made the point because I am somewhat of a history buff, and I always like to perpetuate consistency with the terms preferred by the survivors themselves.
Gay marriage is hardly “reaffirming the “authentic freedom of the human person.””
Homosexuality is enslaving people in a lifetime of disorder and an unhealthy lifestyle. There are numerous studies that show that gay men have serious health risks and mental health issues than heterosexual men. Hardly an affirming lifestyle and certainly not one that is free, unless you count licentiousness as a freedom.
Mary Catherine, I beg to disagree. Not all homosexuals are disordered. There were some “two daddy” families at my kids’ Catholic school. God made them that way, as he made all of us — and just as for heterosexuals, it’s up to the individual if they want to express that sexuality in a negative, destructive way, or a stable, pro-family way.
If one (or more) of my kids turns out to be gay, would I expect them to remain celibate for the rest of their lives, or would I want them to settle down in a loving lifetime relationship, and raise grandchildren? Of course it would be up to them, but I know what I would want for them.
Abortion in Roman Britain?…
My blog readers will be interested in your post so added a trackback to it on CatholicTide…
I don’t believe that gay is a product of nature – but a product of nurture.
Sort of the second child syndrome……
My mind starts to stirring when I see anti-lifer’s(let’s call them what they are) trying to pass this bill next week in New York.
“Freedom of every person” the RIGHT TO LIFE, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
BEFORE THEY PASS THIS BILL, I would like each and every person that will be voting on it, to do one thing,(which they won’t because they are cowards!!)
Make them go into an abortion clinic, go into the room and sit a watch them do an abortion from 6wks to full term baby,
Let them see the women laying there crying and shaking
Let them see the blood of those innocent babies.
Let them hear the sound of the vacuum and the sucking
sounds when a baby is being destroyed.
Let them smell the room of death.
Let them see the parts of those babies(Oh, that’s right it’s not a life yet!!??}
Let them see what a baby looks like after it has been either scraped out of the womb into a bloody jar or
Let them see the body parts of those babies that where slaughtered in that room
Let them see that empty shell of a women and now just laying there crying, saying “What I just done?”
Let them see what they are voting for and then let them see if they have a normal life after watching that!!