OPINION:
Black History Month should serve as a reminder to people that prior to the Civil War, Democrats professed an apparent contradiction as they seceded from the rest of the nation.
They had demanded protection where slavery existed, as well as the right to take their “peculiar property” into the territories. They had demanded that they be allowed to trade their property across state lines and that states enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. Yet during prior and final congressional debates and in the Confederate Constitution, Southerners joined near-universal condemnations of international slave trading.
This contradiction vanished when the South realized it needed new slave states and plantations to absorb an increasing population.
Now, over 150 years later, Black communities provide voting plurality to the Democratic Party and adopt its pro-choice sacrament of abortion. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2019 Black women accounted for 38% of abortions, though Blacks constituted just 14% of the total U.S. population. Applying antebellum population growth to the period after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 would mean 91 million Black people instead of the current 47 million.
What benefits could possibly make this worthwhile?
NOLAN NELSON
Redmond, Oregon
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