Back to Go Forward
C.S. Lewis, the Cambridge medievalist and philosopher, had a rule-of-thumb: Read two old books for every new one. By so doing, one can avoid “chronological snobbery,” by which he meant unreflectively assuming we know better than those who have gone before us. We are often blind to our own errors. Old books, if we are willing, can correct us.
Marvin Olasky’s The Story of Abortion in America (2023) isn’t an old book, but it takes us back to an older time, and therefore functions in a similar way. He and co-writer Leah Savas have offered what they call “a street-level” history, much of which consists of old stories about abortion. The book is remarkable in how it exposes how differently we think today, not only about abortion, but about a lot of things. Let me share a few examples.
Concerning premarital sex and pregnancy, Olasky writes of Anne Orthwood, an indentured servant who gave herself to John Kendall after he assured her that he would marry her if she got pregnant. Kendall reneged. And he got away with it, which was noteworthy because it was unusual. Olasky writes:
Community pressure on young men meant that pregnant, unmarried women could generally count on marriage before going into labor. If young men hesitated, older men intervened. They rarely needed shotguns, but every father had one. To be married under shotgun pressure carried no disgrace, and most marriages were by (at least informal) parental arrangement anyway. But Anne Orthwood had no father or brothers. Her mother was 3000 miles away (p 43).
A few chapters later, Olasky comments that “the patriarchal family was losing its power to shape the lives of the children” (p 85). If there is anything guaranteed to throw our modern world into a fit, it is the idea of patriarchy, for it has become self-evident that patriarchy demeans women and fosters abuse. And while it is true that some men have used patriarchy as a cover for abusing women, the notion that fathers are meant to protect daughters is hardly ever mentioned. Yet the world of the 1800s depended upon it. Today we leave women unprotected and call it choice.
A comment concerning science and medicine jumped out at me, perhaps due to a clip I had seen online a few days earlier. One of the hosts of The View asked Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC’s Chief Medical Correspondent, whether a miscarriage at two months was miscarrying a baby or a bunch of cells. Ashton replied:
It’s definitely not a baby. That’s an incorrect term and it’s also not a fetus…. That’s where we have to distinguish between medicine and facts and science and what you or you or any patient, any woman, any couple believes. And we can’t try to make them the same thing.[1]
Now hear Hugh Hodge, an obstetrician in the 1800s:
What, it may be asked, have the sensations of the mother to do with the vitality of the child? Is it not alive because the mother does not feel it? Every practitioner of obstetrics can bear witness that the child lives and moves and thrives long before the mother is conscious of its existence (p 99).
Ashton’s kind of unshackled speech characterizes today’s science. Maybe if we continue to tell ourselves it’s not a baby, it’s not a baby, it’s not a baby, we’ll forget what was obvious to doctors of yesteryear.
“We will not go back” is common fare at abortion rallies. It has a certain power because we naturally don’t like to regress. Yet sometimes we must. Lewis used the analogy of a math problem to discuss true progress—to get the right answer one must go back to the point of the mistake and work on from there. In other words, sometimes one must go back in order to move forward. (Hopefully Dobbs will turn out to be exactly that.) The 1800s weren’t perfect, to be sure, for no age is free from the effects of human sin, as Olasky and Savas are well aware. But there is much to recover. Whatever misgivings we may have concerning America’s past, are we really better off normalizing drag queens in elementary schools, medical castration, and the planned (and legal) dismemberment of children? Rather than calling men to be men, we entrust our women to abortionists—is that progress?
[1] https://www.foxnews.com/media/abc-news-medical-expert-clashes-view-host-about-miscarriages-definitely-not-baby-months
About the Author
W. Ross Blackburn, who lives with his family in Tennessee, has been a pastor in the Anglican Church in North America for 20 years. He has a PhD (Old Testament) from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and has written articles for the Human Life Review and Touchstone, as well as educational materials for Anglicans for Life. Rev. Blackburn and his wife Lauren, married for 31 years, have shared homeschooling responsibility for their five children.
bio updated April 2024
Dear ABC Doctor Ashton: So a woman (should I say person?) is pregnant. What are they carrying? Well one could reduce the adjective ” pregnant”at any stage to “carrying a clump of cells” and be perhaps in a manner of speaking scientifically accurate. So at 3 weeks she lost a clump of cells or at 18 weeks she lost a clump of cells. And oh, her clump of cells was obliterated in action in Iraq or crossing the street by a speeding car. All were clumps of cells. Scientifically accurate.
Adding values to words? Is that what you are trying to do or to object to Dr Ashton? Abortionists are notoriously corrupt in the choice of words, to obscure, to take away value.
So consider what generations of language texts might say about being pregnant and what how it is defined including what is inside. Clearly Doctor you have your work cut out for you, correcting all these unscientific value enhancements:
merriam-webster: “Etymology — Middle English, from Latin praegnant-, praegnans carrying a fetus, alteration of praegnas, from prae- pre- + -gnas (akin to gignere to give birth to)”
cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ –“of a woman and some female animals) having a baby or babies developing inside the womb:”
Cambridge American –“of female mammals) having young developing in the uterus”
At languageresearch.cambridge.org/british-english/words/detail/ – “A pregnant woman has a baby developing inside her uterus”
At oxfordreference.com –“of a woman or female animal) having a child or young developing in the uterus”
And con’t forget the medical texts that refer to new human life beginning at fertilization
Inside every pregnant mother there is a human being whose life is worthy of protection.