Does America’s History Reveal a Common Consensus on Abortion?
Science and History
Today we have ultrasound technology. We have the science of how human life begins. We know that when a sperm meets the egg, that’s when a unique individual is formed. The unborn life that’s growing inside of a mother’s body—we can see it through ultrasound technology and recognize that this is a unique individual human.
From that knowledge, often we get to the conclusion that abortion is murder. Killing this unborn child in the mother’s womb is murder. But that consensus is not something that is new, something that is just a result of modern technology. It has been the common sense of people in America for centuries that unborn life is human life, and we should protect it and that killing it in abortion is murder.
The Story of Abortion in America
Marvin Olasky, Leah Savas
Authors Marvin Olasky and Leah Savas detail the long history of abortion and its impact on American culture through vivid personal stories that humanize people on both sides of the debate.
For example, back in the 1600s, we have these cases of men forcing abortifacients on women and then going on trial for murder. Why would they go on trial for murder unless the community and the people around them believed that unborn life is human life? And then we have doctors in the 1800s that said things like Life begins at conception.
That’s not something that they needed ultrasound technology in order to know—they knew that already—and they were encouraging women to keep their babies and to not get abortions because they knew that unborn life is human life.
The unborn life that’s growing inside of a mother’s body—we can see through ultrasound technology and recognize that this is a unique individual human.
And then we fast forward to the 1939 World’s Fair. People were lining up to see these models of unborn life sculptures depicting the growth of a human baby in utero. And the Gerber baby products company was handing out pamphlets saying, Don’t get an abortion! Don’t get an abortion! Don’t make a decision that you’ll regret!
So that was the the common narrative, even at this World’s Fair in the 1930s.
Fast forward to today, and we’re even more without excuse. We have ultrasound technology. We have science to back up the fact that abortion is killing unborn human life and it is really something that we should be protecting.
Leah Savas is coauthor with Marvin Olasky of The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652–2022.
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