In an article examining Sen. Joe Biden’s remarks about abortion on Meet the Press, Fr. Thomas Williams says that abortion is the most divisive issue our country has faced next to slavery. He then goes with a comparison of the arguments used by pro-abortionists to those that were used in defense of slavery.

It is fascinating to read over texts circulated in the middle of the 19th century in defense of the practice of slavery. When we look back at how revered politicians, intellectuals, and churchmen could seriously defend a practice that now seems so patently barbaric, we cannot help feeling a twinge of moral superiority. Yet their arguments bear an uncanny resemblance to those now used to defend abortion, almost as if pro-choicers had been using these tracts as fodder for their own rhetoric. From Nancy Pelosi’s “historical argument” (“Slavery was practiced in the greatest civilizations”) to Joe Biden’s “personally opposed” argument (“No one is forcing you to own slaves, just to respect those who do”), all the way to the feminists’ “woman has a right to her own body” argument (“Slaves have been bought and paid for and no one has the right to touch another’s property”) to Obama’s “We don’t know when life begins” argument (“We’re not sure whether black people have souls”), it is truly déjà vu all over again.