What, to the Aborted Baby, is the Fourth of July?

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a Fourth of July speech called “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.”  After extolling the virtues of the nation and the Founding Fathers, he explains that the celebration of white Americans on their independence was still a day of mourning for slaves and former slaves. He eloquently described how the Declaration of Independence promised liberty for all, but hadn’t quite delivered it for a certain segment of the population.

In 2016, the speech is just as powerful as it was back then.  But since the President of the United States is now a black man, and the promises of legal equality have been largely met, I thought it would be interesting to edit Douglass’s speech to relate to the unborn.  Read this powerful rebuke, edited for our times.

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN ABORTION. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the aborted baby’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked bleaker to me than on this 4th of July!

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding baby on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate abortion — the great sin and shame of America!

“I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart an abortionist, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abortion abolitionist fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the abortion abolitionist creed would you have me argue?

On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the unborn baby is a human? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The abortionists themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. At least 38 states have fetal homicide laws, which punish people for committing violent acts against pregnant women and the babies they carry.  What is this but the acknowledgement that the baby is a human  being? The humanity of the baby is conceded.

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal humanity of the unborn child. Is it not astonishing that, if these babies were allowed to live, they would be ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold.  But while they would be reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries,  lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; while they would be engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave…  would they also be called upon to prove that they are men?

Would you have me argue that unborn men and women are entitled to liberty? that he or she is the rightful owner of his or her own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of abortion? Is that a question for Republicans and Democrats? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, to even life itself? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. — There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that abortion is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to stick a stainless steel clamp into a woman’s womb and grab anything that can be reached?  Am I to argue it is wrong to dismember an unborn baby, to suck its brains from its tiny head?  Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that abortion is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity and medicine are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.