But after the war those damnyankee carpetbaggers conspired to temporarily disenfranchise southern white men just because they had engaged in armed rebellion against the government and thereby forced through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. And then the poor downtrodden southern white people just had no choice but to form the Klan and enact Jim Crow laws, because they hadn’t been given enough time to adjust.

Those of you who are much younger than I am and/or did not grow up in hollerin’ distance of Dixie might not have been exposed to this line of reasoning much, but believe me, it was common. Still is, in some circles.

Fast forward to today’s anti-abortion rights movement. Fetus People like to see themselves as the heirs of the abolitionists, and they compare the struggle to protect fetii with the stuggle to end slavery. And they like to evoke the Dred Scott decision, which declared that a black man could not be a citizen and could have no standing to bring suit against a white man. The “antis” want fetii to be given full citizenship status; those who would deny them that status are bad people, just like the justices who ruled against Dred Scott.

But in truth, the anti-choicers more and more remind me of the old white supremacists and Klansmen, not the abolitionists.

First, the line of reasoning that blames the abortion wars on Roe v. Wade (see previous post on abortion) and not on a faction of fanatics who will try to stop abortions by any means is just too much like saying the 13th Amendment was responsible for the formation of the Klan. Let’s pretend that tomorrow Roe is reversed. Does anyone seriously believe that states which allowed abortion to remain legal would not be descended upon by Randall Terry and the screaming culture of death hoardes? Puh-leeze …

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