Group of freed slaves in 1862. MSNBC blogger Ja'han Jones equated the practice of slavery to pro-life laws in an article on Thursday. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
A new piece from The ReidOut blogger Ja’han Jones insisted that the pro-abortion movement stop beating around the bush and refer to abortion bans as "slavery."
Jones began his Wednesday article mentioning how the pro-life movement disguises itself in positive sounding language in order to pursue their agenda. "The debate over abortion is plagued by euphemisms that favor the anti-abortion movement. The most obvious example of this is the term ‘pro-life,’ the nonsensical term anti-abortion activists have adopted to sanitize their stance against bodily autonomy."
He urged abortion rights advocates to start calling pro-life laws and abortion bans "what they actually are: slavery," or "forced labor."
He explained, "What is slavery if not claiming dominion over a body that isn’t yours? And in this case, right-wing lawmakers are claiming ownership over the bodies of pregnant people because they claim to have a vested interest in the babies those bodies can produce."
Abortion rights activist rally at the Washington Monument before a march to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, May 14, 2022. (JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AFP via Getty Images)
"It is literally forced labor," Jones declared.
A recent New York Times column argued similarly, stating that the reversal of Roe v. Wade takes us back to when slave women were forced to give birth.
Jones then quoted an article from a lawyer named Carrie Baker published in Ms. Magazine in May. Baker claimed, "Regardless of compensation or not, the work of gestating and birthing a child is an intimate, invasive, grueling form of labor."
The lawyer went so far as to say that forced birth violates the 13th amendment, which prohibits slavery. "When undertaken willingly, childbearing can be a labor of love. But when states force this labor on a woman, the government is imposing a form of involuntary servitude prohibited by the 13th Amendment," she wrote.
Jones resonated with that argument, commenting, "The 13th Amendment bars slavery or indentured servitude ‘except as punishment for a crime,’ and states are clearly violating it by forcing women into unwanted pregnancies."
The author also claimed Republican-backed abortion bans in various states remind him of "fugitive slave laws," which existed prior to the 13th Amendment. He cited Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson’s recent MSNBC interview in which she claimed that "states barring women from traveling to undergo abortions ‘hearkens back to slavery.’"
The signature of President Abraham Lincoln is seen on the 13th Amendment in a display at the Tennessee State Museum on Monday, Feb. 11, 2013, in Nashville, Tenn. The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, is on display along with the Emancipation Proclamation as part of an exhibit titled Discovering the Civil War. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
As Ja’han Johnson explained, "That was a reference to fugitive slave laws, which predated the 13th Amendment and mandated that enslaved people who escaped be returned to the people who owned them."
He supported the claim, referencing current and future abortion laws in red states. "Texas and Oklahoma already have constitutionally dubious laws on the books prohibiting women from leaving the state to get abortions, and more GOP-led states are expected to introduce similar laws," he wrote.
Johnson also quoted The Nation author and frequent MSNBC guest Elie Mystal, who wrote last March that these states are "are borrowing traces of the sadistic logic and psychological tactics of this country’s enslavers."
Closing out, Johnson referred to Republicans as the "Confederate-obsessed GOP" and claimed that the party is "trying to mimic the social environment its violently anti-American forefathers created before the Civil War. But when Republicans pass policies in pursuit of that goal, it’s incumbent on all of us to name it what it is: slavery revisited."
June 27th: Pro-life protesters gather outside Supreme Court. (Photo by Joshua Comins/Fox News)