The Moral Turning Point

In the early Republic, Americans spoke of slavery the way many speak of abortion today — as a tragic necessity.
Thomas Jefferson called it a moral “abomination,” yet claimed the nation was too entangled to end it. “We have the wolf by the ears,” he said — too dangerous to hold, too dangerous to let go.

But by the 1830s, a stunning transformation had taken place. What the Founders called evil tolerated had become, in Southern rhetoric, a positive good. John C. Calhoun stood in the U.S. Senate and declared that slavery “civilized and benefited both races.” The defenders no longer felt shame. They demanded celebration.

That same moral inversion has taken hold in our day.

From “Safe, Legal, and Rare” to “Shout Your Abortion”

The early pro-choice argument of the 1970s echoed Jefferson’s fatalism: abortion was “tragic but necessary.”
By the 1990s it had become “a right.”
Today it is celebrated as healthcare and even a moral good. Universities host “abortion pride” events. Politicians wear pins that say simply, “Abortion.”

As with slavery in the 1830s, we’ve crossed from shame to sanctification.
The unborn child — once seen as a sorrowful loss — is now erased from the moral equation altogether.

Where We Are on the Timeline

If the moral history of slavery took 80 years to descend from “evil tolerated” to “good celebrated,” abortion has made the same journey in half the time.
We stand where the abolitionists once did in the 1840s: the major institutions are against us, the press mocks our cause, and the political center insists the question is settled.

But history’s lesson is clear: when an evil is praised as a social good, it is the hour for abolitionists, not appeasers.

How the Abolitionists Fought When the World Hated Them

1. They told the truth about the victim.
Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe didn’t debate abstractions — they showed the personhood of the enslaved.
We must show the same: the ultrasound, the heartbeat, the small human hand that science now renders undeniable.

2. They exposed the hypocrisy of comfort.
Abolitionists confronted churches and politicians who claimed neutrality. They forced the nation to see that neutrality was complicity.
Today, that same clarity is needed in our pulpits and our communities.

3. They combined mercy with militancy.
They built underground railroads and orphan houses, but they also flooded Congress with petitions.
Our movement must marry compassion for women with courage to speak — not one without the other.

4. They refused despair.
In the 1840s, abolition looked impossible. Twenty years later, slavery was dead.
History can turn faster than cynics believe.

The Call Now

We are living through America’s second great moral test.
The question is no longer what abortion is — that’s been settled by science. The question is whether we will live as though it matters.

If Calhoun could turn an evil into a “positive good,” we can turn that same inversion back again.
The unborn are the enslaved of our age — voiceless, faceless, defenseless — and the world will not call them human until we do.

The abolitionists of the 1840s had no guarantee of victory, only the conviction that God and conscience were on their side.
We need that same steel today.

Speak. Act. Build. Refuse to be silent.
History belongs to those who stand against its darkest lies.

The Moral Reckoning Ahead

The moral arc of a nation bends not by chance but by courage. The culture that calls evil “good” can be changed only by those who refuse to bend with it. As abolitionists once did, the pro-life generation must rise with conviction, compassion, and the unshakable belief that truth — however despised — will prevail.

References

• The Writings of Thomas Jefferson – University of Virginia Library
• Frederick Douglass Papers – Library of Congress
• John C. Calhoun’s “Positive Good” Speech, 1837 – Yale Law Avalon Project
• National Right to Life Committee

Photo by Preillumination SeTh on Unsplash