I did a little follow-up.

I mentioned in the post just prior to this one that I immediately leaped to slavery/human rights considerations on the mention of the Dred Scott case. And I mentioned three things that should have made me consider it from the political aspect. There's actually another couple of clues available, primary among which is that the issue, though powerfully symbolic to Black folks, just doesn't mean the same thing to the mainstream. Therefore any manipulation of the symbol is not intended to attach to the meaning Black people derive from history.

The other strong clue is the existence of Alan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is credited with inventing the abortion-as-slavery meme.

As former presidential candidate and Ambassador Alan Keyes once remarked, the history and heritage of black Americans has a special bearing on the crisis of our times, which is epitomized by the abortion issue. According to this conservative black statesman, so-called abortion rights "resurrect the principles of oppression and slavery" that destroyed so many black Americans' ancestors.

Keyes calls abortion a kind of "traffic in human life" that "destroys the dignity of both the aborted child and the woman." And he notes that "our republic rests on the premise that life and freedom come from God," so all Americans are called upon to "reject the destructive logic of abortion," or risk losing that republic. There is no middle ground.

…To many, the Roe v. Wade parallels are obvious. That case too was an attempt to settle a vexing and controversial issue. And just like the Dred Scott decision, Roe v. Wade was enacted with a 7-to-2 majority vote, and ruled that legally the people in question — this time the unborn — were not to be considered people at all. They had no civil rights, no human rights. Unborn babies were thenceforth to be considered the property of the mother, who had the absolute right to choose, either to keep or kill her child.

Pro-life believers reacted much the same as the abolitionists that came before them, calling the ruling immoral and unjust because it discriminated against an entire class of people on the basis of a biological fact beyond their control — not skin color this time, but their unborn status. And to the pro-lifers' moral outcry, Justice Harry Blackmun issued a majority opinion that allowed a whole chorus of "pro-choice" abortion-on-demand proponents to respond in almost the exact same terms used by the pro-slavery crowd years earlier.