If you ask the average person in America if they oppose slavery, or if you're keen to be politically correct, human trafficing most people would say yes. Ask the same person if they consider themselves to be an abolitionist and you will most likely get a confused look and maybe some mumbling. It just isn't a term we heard used in our everyday lives but that is changing.
What is an abolitionist? Simply stated it is a person or group of people looking to abolish (i.e. do away with) something. The term is most often linked with the nineteenth century movement to abolish human slavery in the British Empire and here in these United States of America. I am happy to say that there are many examples of these same kinds of abolitionists around today and the numbers are growing thanks to organizations like Not For Sale. These organizations are opening peoples eyes to the fact that slavery still exists in the world, it simply isn't legal anymore.
The fact that it is illegal does mean that there are now legal avenues that can be used to bring down slave owners, exploiters and merchants that weren't available to the folks in the nineteenth century and that is good but that isn't the whole issue. When we fight against slavery we are battling to change a mindset. People are human beings and, by the virtue of the fact that they ARE human, have an intrinsic value. The aren't property, they are PEOPLE.
You might be thinking, "Well, duh that's a no-brainer!" but traditionally slavery was justified by declaring that the slave wasn't, in fact, a genuine person but an animal and therefore could be owned as property. Those who enslaved others denied the personhood of the enslaved. That's why it took so long to make slavery illegal, you had to change the worldview of the slave owning culture so that they could accept that the enslaved were, in fact, people.
Now that term personhood is one that comes up in another societal debate. One that traditionally isn't associated with the term 'abolitionist' and that issue is that of abortion. The pro-abortion folks say that the organism growing within a womans womb isn't really a person until it is born. Therefore it is not morally wrong to terminate it for whatever reason the woman whose womb it happens to be gestating in deems acceptable.
As a Christian I cannot, in good conscience, agree with that assessment. I believe that God handcrafts each and every person and if that is the case then from the moment of conception they are a person, someone who was lovingly created by God and who God had planned a future for. It is therefore murder to end the life of that human being, no matter what reason I may have.
"What about in the case of rape?", you might ask. Honestly, while rape is a horrific act and is never justified under ANY circumstance the fact of the matter is that of a pregnancy does result that child is still a human being and no one should have the right to end its life. That child had no say in how it was conceived and to sentence it to death because of the crimes of its father isn't right by any standard I am aware of. You wouldn't put a kid on death row because his father was a rapist, a gun runner or a drug dealer would you? No, you'd go after the father and punish him. Now, I can understand a woman in that situation not wanting to raise that child sure to the painful circumstances surrounding its conception but there are many couples out there who can't have children who would be more than willing to give such a child a god home by adopting them but that's another discussion for another day.
So why bring up abolitionists and them talk about abortion? What's the connetion? There is now an organization looking to abolish human abortion around the world. Their name: Abolish Human Abortion or simply AHA.
Ok, so what does any of that have to do with fighting the zombie inside? Stripping someone of their personhood so that you can trample their liberties for your own selfish reasons is the height of allowing your inner zombie to rule you.
No comments:
Post a Comment