WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - In an article entitled "Symbols Matter! A Campaign That Forever Changed the World"  Eric Teetsel, the Executive Director of the Manhattan Declaration, wrote:

"Josiah Wedgwood was an English potter and entrepreneur who applied his gifts to the promotion of the abolitionist movement. His medallion depicting a slave kneeling in chains asking, "Am I not a man and a brother?" would become the defining image of a campaign that forever changed the world. Benjamin Franklin summed up the significance of the logo in suggesting it was "equal to that of the best written pamphlet."

That symbol spoke more loudly than words and advanced that abolition movement to its desired result, the end of that form of slavery as an institution.

Remember, that form of slavery was legal - and even protected by the United States Supreme Court. Human Persons whose skin pigmentation was darker than those who held the reins of power were treated as property and allowed to be owned, used and discarded.

The proponents of that form of slavery called it a "slavery right" and the Supreme Court of that day said it was legal in their 1857 opinion of Dred Scott v. Stanford. We look back on that opinion in horror, as we should. We insist that the Supreme Court could not make what is always a wrong a right with the stroke of a judicial quill!

Yet, that is precisley what happened in Roe and Doe, in the new slavery of abortion on demand.

Ironically, the Justices in Dred Scott applied a "strict constructionist" approach. They did not approach the evil of slavery as a matter of Natural Law - that it is always and everywhere wrong to enslave human persons.

They did not use Natural Law jurisprudence and recognize the equality of all human persons and their fundamental human rights as an endowment from a Creator which cannot be taken away by any governmental branch. 

We need to wake up! The overturning of the opinions in Roe and Doe, as important as that is - will not end abortion, our current form of slavery. We will simply have another version of "slave states" and "free states" to contend with.

Our struggle on behalf of children in the womb is a new abolition movement and we need to learn from our history.

A similar jurisprudence was at work in Roe v Wade, Doe v Bolton and their progeny as that which undergirded the Dred Scott decision. An entire class of persons, children in the womb, have been relegated to the status of "chattel", personal property, who can now be disposed of by those more powerful.

Since 1973 over 55 million lives, in the United States of America alone, have been taken in procured abortions. The number throughout the world is staggering and can be viewed here.

The shorthand phrase "abortion rights" is the linguistic tool of a media class which is the tool of the proponents of this new form of slavery, abortion on demand. There is no "abortion right".   The true Right is the one denied in every procured abortion, the Right to Life.

These children have no voice except our own. They are killed by chemicals and surgical strikes - all protected by the police power of the State. They have no power to resist this new form of slavery without our help.

Medical science has confirmed what our conscience already knew and the Natural Law has long confirmed; the child in the womb is our neighbor. These children are our first neighbors in the first home of the whole human race, their mothers' womb. It is always wrong to kill our neighbors.

Our 3D and 4D sonogram technology has made it possible to take baby�s first picture and send it as a birth announcement or place it on a Face Book or My Space page or send it through our Social Networks.

We marvel at the image of those little babies at the early stages of what is a lifetime of development for every human being. However, we then use that same technology to direct the weapons of warfare which will dismember them in the womb and kill them. We do not want to see those pictures.

With the introduction of "baby's first picture" we watch these children smile, play, feel pain and grow. These 3 and 4d images are becoming more and more prevalent throughout the social media. They are regularly showing up on television commercials.

We surgically operate on these first neighbors in the womb. We then put them back in their home and allow them to continue to grow so they can be healthier upon their birth. We know they are members of our human family.

It becomes harder to deny that the child in the womb is our neighbor. The Orwellian Newspeak of "Choice" is growing stale and tired. The wind is out of its sails. Some choices are always and everywhere wrong, and the taking of innocent human life in at the top of the list.

All of these advances have "humanized" the child to an increasing number of people who once bought the lie of those who promoted abortion as "choice". Whether a child is "wanted" has become the sole criterion for whether he or she has a right to life.

Decent people are beginning to recognize this and indecent people are having a hard time defending their choice to kill our youngest neighbor.

As I use this expression "first neighbors" in my pro-life work people inevitably ask the questions that open the door to my being able to explain this truth. However, I have concluded, after studying the profound effect of Josiah Wedgwood's medallion,that  we need our own symbol in our new abolition movement.

I have asked a friend to design such a new symbol, using the beautiful 4D image of one of our neighbors in the womb surrounded with these words "Am I Not Your Neighbor". I will keep you all up to date on the progress. I will use a non-profit organization I began years ago to facilitate the distribution of this new symbol and medallion.

Symbols speak more loudly than words. We are part of a new abolition movement and this "Am I Not Your Neighbor" effort may help us our struggle to prevail in ending the new slavery of abortion on demand.