a history lesson This is an issue that deserves to be increasingly scrutinized, depth, understood, discussed. The fact that a mother terminated, with a doctor and with the backing of the law, the life of the child she is carrying in her womb, can never become a trivial matter, and even "normal". On the contrary, if you do not want to escape from this tragedy and if we consider its impressive social dimension in our day, we should recognize that this is a true "moral issue."
not reduce this concept to the political debate on corruption in any party. There are problems that are proving much more 'issues' and more deeply and dramatically "moral". Nelson Mandela once said that the conflict situation in the territories of Gaza has become "the moral issue of our time." If you were to do a ranking, I think the real moral issue of our time in Italy and in many other countries, rather than abortion. Millions of women around the world decide to end the life growing in their womb, millions of little human beings are eliminated before they can see the light of the sun, millions of women and families suffering from this deep wound.
One issue which is at stake is how we, human beings, we treat other human beings. One issue which is also at stake is our very conception of human dignity and universal. After all, it is a moral issue like some of the most dense and deep humanity that have been addressed through the centuries. Faced with such questions are not just pretend nothing happened and carry on, looking elsewhere.
In this regard, it may be instructive to recall the moral question of slavery as it appeared in the social debate in the United States two centuries ago.
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling (in the case of Dred Scott vs. Sanford) which denied blacks the rights granted by the Constitution to American citizens. The text of the sentence says that those who wrote the Constitution "did not consider blacks brought from Africa as slaves and their descendants as citizens, because at the time were considered a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and emancipated or not, remained subject its authority, and had no rights and privileges than those that those who had the power and the government wanted to offer them. "
might seem that the case was finally closed, nothing less than a Supreme Court decision in a democratic country in which the judgments that law. That ruling, however, did not solve the social debate on slavery. The following year, in fact, there were the famous seven public debates in the State of Illinois, ahead of elections for the U.S. Congress, between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. The central theme was precisely the slavery [2]. Not whether or not to abolish it completely. The issue was debated more simply if you were to allow the extension of legal slavery in the northern states, where it was not yet been legalized. Douglas repeatedly accused Lincoln of being "abolitionist" serious insult at the time, that meant a person who wanted to abolish slavery completely. And the proof was that he was allowed to state publicly that the Declaration of Independence applied to blacks as much as whites (statement that clearly contrasted with the Supreme Court decision just cited). Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to "nationalize slavery" and extending it to the northern states.
Douglas's argument is very significant for our times: it is the people to decide democratically whether they want to legalize slavery in their state. It was the so-called doctrine of Popular Sovereignty (popular sovereignty). After all, slavery was legal in many states (it was a fait accompli), and if citizens of other states want it, you could not see how anyone could oppose this democratically expressed will. All states, therefore, had have the power to exclude from the order of the rights "inferior races."
Lincoln does not argue in favor of full social equality, but Douglas said that ignored the basic humanity of blacks and the fact that slaves had the same right to freedom. He said: "I agree with Judge Douglas that he [the Negro] is not equal to me in many respects - certainly not in color, and perhaps even in a moral or intellectual capacity. But the right to eat without anyone's permission, the bread she earns with her own hands, he is like me and the same as Judge Douglas, and like any living man. "
And then, loaded with strong words, saying that could not hate the zeal to spread slavery: "I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself." He also asked: "If you make exceptions to the Declaration of Independence declares that the principle that all men are equal, where will it end? If a man says does not apply to the negro, because he can tell another that does not apply to another man. "
He also made an important statement on the future of the debate: the crisis and conflict will be overcome only when the slave will be placed "in the way of ultimate extinction." He also had to say that slavery should be regarded as an evil and had to prevent his expansion: "This is the real problem. This is the problem that will persist in our country, when the language of Judge Douglas and I are silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong - throughout the world. "
The elections for the General Assembly of the State that year were won by the party of Stephen Douglas. Apparently, many thought like him. But then, in the race for the presidency of the nation, Douglas was defeated by Lincoln. The serious moral question of slavery is not turned away, and indeed was, as we know, a major factor in the outbreak of the terrible Civil War. Only after the war, won by "northerners" against the extension of slavery, and the insistence of President Lincoln, came to its abolition, with the XIII th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. Only then did the bitter public debate moved towards the end, when, as he said Lincoln, slavery itself was placed "in the way of ultimate extinction."
reflect, therefore. We analyze, examine, meditate. Discuss. There is no court order, small or a "supreme", there is no international law or resolution that could clear the moral issue of our time. Human consciousness can be dimmed but never dies.
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