Last week as our nation was participating in the midterm elections, my writing class was reading and discussing Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. You may think these two things have nothing in common, but stick with me for a bit and let me unpack it.
Many of the issues on our ballots were a direct result of the Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which overturned Roe v. Wade and gave the authority on the issue of abortion back to the states. And many of those ballot issues did not go the way we had hoped. Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in response to the Fugitive Slave Act, which gave Southerners the right to pursue their escaped slaves and prohibited assistance to runaway slaves by those in the North. Her motivation for writing this novel was political. She understood that the law was not set in stone.
I don’t want to go into a full-blown literature lesson here, but I do want to give you some context on Stowe’s novel. Many scholars attribute the abolition of slavery at least in part to the influence of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (making it ironic that it is a book banned in most government schools for issues of racism). In fact, there is a commonly accepted anecdote, unproven as it may be, that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the White House shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation had been announced, he greeted her with, “So you are the little woman who made the great war.” While Stowe’s book sold 300,000 copies in its first year, and its sales were rivaled only by those of the Bible at that time, it is estimated that ten times that many people actually read the novel in the U.S. alone. Stowe brought the issue of slavery into living rooms, parlors, and even coaches and train cars. Is there anything we can learn from her book in our fight against abortion and the states that want to make it a “right”?
If you want to know more details about how Uncle Tom’s Cabin was instrumental in abolishing slavery and all of the positive and negative repercussions Stowe faced, I encourage you to do a little research. It really is fascinating, but it is not the point of this post. What I want to focus on is what Stowe included in her book that made it so effective.
Faith Should Drive Politics
First, Stowe allowed her faith to inform her worldview and, by extension, her politics. She didn’t shy away from bringing faith into the discussion. So many Christians today think we must separate our politics from our faith, and since abortion is a political issue, it must be discussed without bringing up the Bible.
My first response to this argument is that abortion is not a political issue; it is a worldview issue. And furthermore, our politics should always flow from our faith because our faith shapes our worldview and our worldview dictates how we live our lives. This includes how we vote and what causes we support. We should not be afraid to bring faith into the conversation.
Scripture tells us in Romans 1 that we know the truth, yet in our arrogance, we suppress the truth. The more we expose people to the truth, the harder they have to work to suppress it. So keep speaking the truth!
As Allie Stuckey often points out, science can tell us when life begins, but it can’t tell us why life matters. If we depend solely on secular science, we will be missing that important piece. Our faith tells us why life matters: because every person, even the baby in the womb, is made in the image of God. Without this worldview underpinning our position, we can’t explain why that baby’s life is important.
Put Flesh on the Issue of Abortion
No matter how far north Stowe’s readers lived, she brought slavery into their living rooms. It was easier for people to talk about the slaves when they didn’t know their names and their stories, when they couldn’t picture their faces and feel their sorrows. Stowe drew her readers into the lives of the slaves so they could see first hand what slavery was really like.
We can do the same thing with abortion. We need to stop using euphemisms, and start calling it what it is: murder. We even need to stop using the word abortion because that word doesn’t truly communicate the atrocity of slaughtering a pre-born baby. We need to put flesh on the issue of abortion by speaking truth, yes, even graphic truth, instead of trying to make people comfortable with the conversation. It is not “reproductive healthcare,” “fetal tissue,” or a “clump of cells.” It is a developing human, who, in most cases, is being murdered for convenience.
There were those who knew they would personally never own a slave, but they didn’t think it was their place to interfere with the economy and workings of a plantation. Once they saw flesh on the issue of slavery, they could no longer distance themselves from the discussion. The same is true with abortion. The idea that you can be personally pro-life but politically pro-choice goes right out the window when you see flesh on the issue of abortion. You begin to realize that even in those extreme situations of rape or incest, it isn’t the baby’s price to pay. That isn’t justice.
There were also slave owners who read Stowe’s book, and through her description, recognized the wickedness of which they were taking part. At the end of the novel, spoiler alert, George Shelby frees his slaves, offers to educate them, and starts paying them wages if they want to stay on his plantation. He repents of the belief that one human can own another human. In much the same way, a woman who has had an abortion, when confronted with the severity of her sin, can repent and be made new thanks to Christ’s payment for her sins. If she never accepts the full weight of her sin, she can never truly repent and be forgiven. Yes, we can be gentle and loving, but we must remember that it is a gift to speak truth to those who are suffering and dying in their sin!
Paint a Picture
Stowe’s readers could no longer find any virtue in slavery. Even the kindest slave owners did not hit the mark. If you’ve read the novel, you know that Tom’s owner, Mr. Shelby, whom Tom had known since Shelby was a boy, planned to free him and had made this known to Tom. That was his plan, that is until he fell on hard financial times. Suddenly, the reader understood that there was no true loyalty, no matter how far back they went. Once his owner sold him, Tom was at the mercy of several different owners with varying degrees of treatment. Through her writing, Stowe forced her readers to pick a side, and they did so fully informed of the barbarity slaves experienced.
Perhaps a novel is not the ideal way to communicate the atrocities of abortion to our current society. Unfortunately, I fear most wouldn’t make it through a very long novel like Stowe’s novel. But there are ways we can paint the picture for them: social media posts or graphics, descriptions of abortions, or even a video of an abortion itself. Statistics prove that women who see their pre-born baby on an ultrasound are less likely to kill the baby, so even showing ultrasound videos where the baby is wiggling or kicking can be wildly effective in convincing someone of the humanity of the pre-born. And of course, we can use our words. We can have effective conversations capable of persuading because we have truth on our side.
Remember that Stowe wrote this book in reaction to a law that was passed. That law is no longer in place. Elections come and go, and laws can come and go, too. Don’t be discouraged by laws that passed or didn’t pass during the midterm elections. While we absolutely need to take part in the political process, be informed, and exercise our right to vote, our job is to use the Gospel to change hearts. Wouldn’t it be glorious if a law became obsolete because so many hearts were changed, it was no longer needed?
There is so much more that could be said on this topic and so many other lessons we can learn from Stowe’s novel, but this is a great place to start! Don’t be afraid to speak from a biblical worldview, put flesh on the issue of baby murder, and paint a picture so people know what’s really happening. How can you start to effect change in your circle of influence?
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