The Freedom to have Freedom
Fewer words have a stronger meaning or impact than FREEDOM. The root of every global conflict and war in history is based on a quest for freedom. Biblically, freedom is a prevalent theme from Genesis to Revelations.
Northland Freedom Alliance has a mission to educate and advance our communities via the freedoms prescribed in the Bill of Rights. Constitutionally (and therefore legally), Americans are granted a host of rights and freedoms including freedom of speech, freedom to petition our government, freedom to practice (or not practice) a religion, freedom to bear arms and the freedom to vote. Recently, our freedoms have expanded to include the freedom to love and marry the person of your choosing.
Both political ideologies; left and right, Democrat and Republican, point to the preservation of freedom as a motivator for supporting their cause and candidates. Restrictions on the 2nd Amendment, for instance, are aggressively pushed by the political left, while efforts to expand voting to non-citizens, felons or those under the age of 18 are met with fierce opposition from the right.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade and returned the jurisdiction of abortion to the states, the highly politicized topic has again become a prevalent issue among voters. In Wisconsin, abortion played heavily in the recent Gubernatorial and State Supreme Court races. Democrats successfully energized their base, particularly in regions with younger voters such as college campuses and the area surrounding Madison to push back against strict abortion laws. While conservatives touted traditional freedoms prescribed in our constitution and the rule of law, liberals warped the term to sell bodily autonomy and ‘reproductive freedom’.
There is one glaring omission and fallacy with the argument for reproductive rights. The freedom to be safe at school, vote, love the one you’re with, protest your government or anything else you choose to do is predicated on your right and freedom to be born.
A fundamental difference between those on opposite ends of the abortion debate spectrum is that liberals claiming ‘healthcare freedom’ for women do not recognize an unborn child as a unique person. Grotesquely, many refer to the unborn as simply ‘a lump of cells’ within the mother’s womb. In reality, that lump of cells is a new person with unique DNA, will quickly develop a heartbeat, brain and the ability to feel. By 23 weeks of gestation, half of those children born prematurely will be able to survive outside the womb.
According to CDC data, slightly more the 10% of births are preterm. Among U.S. pregnancies, the sex of the child is roughly evenly split between boy and girl, meaning nearly half of births and consequently half of deaths by abortion are of females. Of the 29 states that report ethnic data on abortion, 39% of all women who had an abortion were African-American, a shocking statistic considering non-Hispanic black persons make up only 12.1% of the total U.S. population.
For the political left to claim ‘reproductive freedom’, they disingenuously overlook the freedoms they are denying those children that are lost to abortion. The data in conclusive; half of the deaths in the U.S. due to abortions are of little girls and over a third of those aborted are African-American. The children lost to abortion will never get to experience the freedom to breathe clean air, to attend a university, to laugh, to vote or to experience the joy of being a parent. Sadly, their freedom was denied for the sake of convenience by politicians who do not value life.