Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
While there were many tailwinds on our inevitable journey toward Civil War, perhaps no event accelerated its start more than the Supreme Court’s infamous and unconstitutional Dred Scott v. Sanford decision in 1857. The 7-2 decision, which ruled that no black could be considered a U.S. citizen, undermined the efforts of abolitionists and the then-nascent Republican Party to limit the expansion of slavery.
Northern free states had long tried to push back against the vile institution of slavery. In 1787, delegates from the North struck an agreement with delegates from the South in an effort to limit the political influence of the Southern slave states. It’s known as the three fifth’s compromise.
While Southern delegates didn’t consider blacks to be citizens, they wanted to count slaves as full persons for the purposes of apportionment in the House of Representatives. The Northern delegates proposed that only free blacks be included in the apportionment, which would both reduce the political power of the slave states, and discourage slavery. In the end, however, the delegates agreed to count slaves in the Southern states as three-fifths of a person.
Then, in 1820, the Northern anti-slavery states struck another compromise with the Southern pro-slavery states. Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state in exchange for admitting Maine as a free state. The compromise also agreed to outlaw slavery in all territory above the 36º 30′ latitude line in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory.
But in 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional in its Dred Scott v. Sanford decision. Not only did the decision affirm that blacks had no rights, but Congress had no right to abolish slavery. The Supreme Court effectively put an end to all debates regarding the issue of slavery.
Slavery, of course, was nowhere to be found in the Constitution. As the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass argued in 1860, “its language is ‘we the people;’ not we the white people…” The seven pro-slavery Supreme Court Justices didn’t issue their decision based on an originalist interpretation of the text of the Constitution itself, they had issued their decision based on their activist slaveholders’ interpretation of the Constitution.
Consequently, four years after the Supreme Court issued its infamous Dred Scott decision, our violent Civil War began. After Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, the slave state of South Carolina formally declared its secession from the Union.
“A geographical line has been drawn across the Union,” the Declaration claimed, “and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”
While hostility to slavery served as the cause and impetus of our 19th century Civil War, is it possible that hostility to abortion might serve as the cause and impetus of another Civil War in the 21st century?
Just as the seven pro-slavery Supreme Court justices issued their Dred Scott decision based on an activist slaveholders’ interpretation of the Constitution, the seven pro-abortion justices issued their Roe v. Wade decision based on their activist interpretation of the Constitution.
Abortion, like slavery, is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. And the Roe decision, like the Dred Scott decision, effectively ended the debate about abortion.
The Supreme Court’s latest decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is presently viewed by pro-abortion activists as an attack on so-called ‘women’s rights,’ akin to the pro-slavery activists’ view of Lincoln’s election as an attack on so-called slaveowners’ and slave states’ rights.
While the issue of slavery pitted the slave states against the free states, the issue of abortion has pitted the red states against the blue states. And just as the pro-slave states were unwilling to tolerate an association with anti-slave states, the pro-abortion activists and states are unwilling to tolerate an association with the pro-life activists and states.
The 6-3 SCOTUS decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade doesn’t abolish abortion any more than the Missouri Compromise of 1820 abolished slavery. But the pro-abortion advocates and Democrats appear to be dissatisfied with any result other than forcing their pro-abortion policies on all 50 states.
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln asserted that “Either the opponents of slavery, 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 alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.”
164 years later it appears that the opponents of abortion will arrest the further spread of it or its advocates will push abortion forward, till it becomes lawful in all the states.
In light of this, abortion may very well be the issue that leads to a second Civil War, and the recent SCOTUS decision the event that accelerates the start of another Civil War.
But it won’t be the fault or desire of red states and pro-life advocates. It’ll be the result of intolerant blue states and pro-abortion advocates, who defy the Constitution and assert that the unborn are as inferior as the blacks they once claimed had no constitutional rights or privileges.
We already fought a Civil War over slavery. Will we fight a second Civil War over abortion?
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