Human society has been evolving slowly over the millennia. Our earliest post-Fall-From-Eden ancestors did not receive the Ten Commandments because the primitive spoken and written languages of those times were incapable of grasping that level of moral competence.
How Should We Judge Pre-Ten Commandments and Pre-Christian Times?
But even before Moses received the Ten Commandments, humans had some basic knowledge of right and wrong. Otherwise, why was Moses understandably angry when he came down from Mt. Sinai with the tablets and saw the debauchery and idolatry taking place? His people were not behaving to a moral level which was reasonably expected of them at that point in human development. Nevertheless, for us to look down upon these peoples for their actions, which were only moderately more immoral than what we do today, would be the height of arrogance.
Of course, we cannot approve of some behaviors considered commonplace among the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc. We should also be humble enough to admit that they did not have the benefit of the more refined moral codes which we have been taught. This is not to whitewash their atrocities or hedonistic excesses. But once again, it would require an unacceptable level of hubris to suggest our society is over-achieving morally when compared to those peoples.
World Injustices: Some are Reduced, But New Ones Arrise
But, honestly, just how morally advanced are we? Although slavery in Europe was outlawed twice during the “Dark Ages” 1, it returned. Consistent progress toward its reduction (but as yet, not total elimination) didn’t begin until the 19th century. 2 Religious wars may have claimed five million lives since the time of Christ according to Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. of EWTN, but he has also noted that wars ignited by ideologies killed 100 million in the 20th century alone. That’s progress?
Two Terrible Supreme Court Decisions Prior to “Roe” Which Were Reversed
Even in our own United States, two terribly racially unjust Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) 3 and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) 4 established very bad precedents. They were the law of the land until overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments (ratified in 1865 and 1868) 5 for the former and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) 6 for the latter. (Unfortunately, the Brown decision made the mistake of going beyond the problem of injustice and, to quote Thomas Sowell, declared erroneously that racially segregated schools “’are inherently unequal,’ there have been many predominantly or wholly minority schools whose test scores were at or above the national average.” 7 An example of this unintended but very real destruction of some schools as a result of the Court’s response involved the renowned Dunbar High School in our nation’s capital is in the footnote below.)
Legalization of Baby-Killing and Our Chance at Reversing this Grave Error
Then we had the rise of eugenics in the early 20th century promoted by Margaret Sanger’s organization American Birth Control League which later became Planned Parenthood. Among her allies was the KKK. The murder of unborn babies, notoriously put under the umbrella of “reproductive rights” and “pro-choice” became legal as a result of Roe v. Wade (1973) and was given a boost by Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) 8. These decisions have encouraged additional rationalized killings called “assisted suicide” or “death with dignity.”
The Supreme Court has the opportunity to reverse its 1973 decision and toss Roe v. Wade into the same trash heap which the Scott and Plessy rulings also deserved. If this is realized in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision to be delivered before the 2022 summer break for the Court, some states will be able to activate laws which eliminate or reduce future deaths which this 49-year old notorious error in Constitutional interpretation has been permitting. However, the move toward respect for life will not be nationwide as seen with the Brown decision because, in this case, each state will decide its own course. Nevertheless, it is a step toward a less barbaric society.
We can only hope that future generations will be more merciful in the judgment of our times of rationalized murder of the pre-born than we have been for the eras belonging to Christopher Columbus, some missionaries, and our U.S. Founding Fathers……. Of course, if federally illegal demonstrations are able to intimidate members of the Court and delay the Roe reversal for a future time, may we have the strength to carry our on-going shame with the resolve to continue the fight for the most basic human right from which all other rights flow— the right to life.
1 – “Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History,” by Rodney Stark, Templeton Press; West Conshohocken, PA. 2016.
2 – “Slavery in History,” https://www.freetheslaves.net/slavery-today-2/slavery-in-history/
3 – “Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford
4 – “Plessy v. Ferguson (1896),” https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/plessy-v-ferguson
5 – “Dred Scott decision still resonates today,” https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/dred-scott-decision-still-resonates-today-2
6 – https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483
7 – “At one time, the reputation of Dunbar graduates was such that they did not have to take entrance examinations to be admitted to Dartmouth, Harvard, and some other selective colleges.”
“The landmark racial desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education initially led to a strong resistance to school desegregation in many white communities, including that in Washington, D.C. Ultimately a political compromise was worked out in the District of Columbia: In order to comply with the Supreme Court decision, without having a massive shift of students, the D.C. school officials decided to turn all public schools into neighborhood schools. By this time, the neighborhood around Dunbar High School was rundown … This had not affected the school’s academic standards, however, because black students from all the rest of the city went to Dunbar.
“When Dunbar became a neighborhood school, however, the whole character of its student body changed radically — as did the character of its teaching staff… Dunbar quickly became just another failing ghetto school, with all the problems that such schools have… It is a very revealing fact about the politics of education that no one tried to stop this from happening…
“Then she (Dr. Margaret Just Butcher, respected educator and a Dunbar graduate) reminded me that ‘racial integration’ was the battle cry of the hour in the 1950s. No one thought about what would happen to black schools, not even Dunbar.
“… Such are the ways of politics, where the crusade of the hour often blocks out everything else, at least until another crusade comes along and takes over the same monopoly of our minds.”
From “Black Rednecks and White Liberals, by Thomas Sowell, Encounter Books, New York, 2005.
8 – Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/505/833
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