Lincoln's House Divided Speech, year 2024

[little2add]

 

"A house divided against itself, cannot stand.  "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half pro-abortion and half anti-abortion

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of abortion will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.

 

[little2add]

funny how the US map 2024 looks today compared to year 1858 and its odd too that the democrat party was pro-slavery/ pro-abortion and the Republican party was anti-slavery/prolife, then and now?

 

 

 

[Luigi]

I agree. And the question of abortion has been handled by the politicians almost exactly the way the question of slavery was. Some politicians were clearly for and some were clearly against slavery; some politicians argued that it wasn't a national question but a state-by-state question; some politicians claimed that they were personally against it but they couldn't justify imposing their personal opinions on the whole nation; the Supreme Court supported slavery laws every step of way, often using very creative reasoning to justify their decisions; there were really only four national laws that governed slavery and they were often unfunded, underfunded, or largely ignored; and those laws were written for the benefit of the owners of the slaves, not for the benefit of the slaves themselves. The parallels are striking. 

The real problem, on both issues, is not just the matter of law. It's the conversion of hearts and minds. Even after slavery was officially ended, something very akin to slavery continued for a long time. Even after the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s were passed, the hearts and minds of an awful lot of people have not been converted to reflect the intent of the laws. 

This is why St. Paul gives priority to the Spirit over the law - the law never converted anyone's way of thinking, whereas the Spirit has. And in a literary vein, it's why Mr. Bumble, in Dickens' Oliver Twist, says "... the law is a ass."