You probably heard about President Obama’s swatting of a fly during an interview with CNBC on the 16^th of June. While watching the news, you probably welcomed the light moment in the midst of constant bad news about the economy and the recession. But the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) publicly scolded Obama for the incident.

            “We support compassion for even the smallest of animals,” says Bruce Friedrich, the vice president for policy at PETA. But what about compassion for the smallest of humans?

            PETA’s official statement says: “There are people on both sides of the abortion issue in the animal rights movement, just as there are people on both sides of the animal rights issues in the pro-life movement. And just as the pro-life movement has no official position on animal rights, the animal rights movement has no official position on abortion.”

            So, according to PETA, it is an grave injustice to swat a fly, an animal which survives solely on instinct and lacks any sort of real intelligence. But they could not care less if a baby, a human created in the image and likeness of God, is mercilessly slaughtered.

            This kind of thinking is wacky, if not completely insane, to any fair-minded person. But no one seems to notice or care because our society has devolved so much that we completely disregard the principles that our nation was founded on.

            “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” Our founding fathers held the principle that government’s responsibility is to protect life and that life is an unalienable right, never to be taken away by and person, group, or government. Would they not be appalled to see the same government which they conceived on this belief has now slaughtered 50,000,000 of its own children?

            “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

            President Abraham Lincoln repeated those words of the Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal” – in the Gettysburg Address. It is arguably the greatest speech ever given. But people seem to overlook these words. Lincoln’s and our founding fathers’ choice of words was not accidental or coincedental. They said that all men are CREATED equal. Not equal once they are born or equal once they can survive outside the womb, but equal from the moment they are created by God.

            But in 1857, seven men on the Supreme Court ignored the principles of our founding fathers and ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that black slaves were to be treated as property of the slaveholder; that they were not on the same level as other humans and could be bought, sold, or killed freely and without punishment.

Lincoln gave everything he had, including, ultimately, his life, to correcting the wrongs of the 1857 decision and proving the truth that blacks are just as human as whites; that all men are CREATED equal; that no life is any less important or valuable than the next. And, though it took decades for the this truth to be fully realized, he succeeded.

But five score and sixteen years later, seven men on the Supreme Court ignored the principles of Lincoln and our founding fathers, reverted back to the slavery era, and ruled in Roe v. Wade that unborn children are to be treated as property of the mother; that they are not on the same level as other humans and can be killed freely and without punishment.