Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson was honored at a Friday service after passing away in February at the age of 86. The service was filled with staunchly pro-abortion voices — including Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, as well as former Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran her presidential campaign on supporting abortion. 

Jesse Jackson’s son, Jesse Jackson, Jr., criticized these presidents for not knowing his father well. He insisted his father had a “tense relationship with political order” without regard for race or political party. 

Nothing highlights his father’s political independence more than the early messages of Jackson’s legacy, which were unabashedly pro-life. 

In 1973, Rev. Jackson told Jet magazine that “abortion is genocide” and encouraged people to be sexually responsible. Later, he compared the act to slavery, saying “the name has changed, but the game remains the same.” He opposed taxpayer-funded abortion and called for a law or constitutional amendment to prohibit abortion entirely. He even acknowledged the parallels to slavery and targeting of Black Americans: “The name has changed, but the game remains the same.” 

Jesse Jackson’s pro-life stance came from his own conception. His mother was statutorially raped at 16-years-old by a 33-year-old neighbor, leading to her pregnancy with Jackson. Jesse Jackson’s mother chose life. 

But eventually, Jackson gave into the ideas of the far-left, anti-life establishment that told the world the best way to help the least fortunate among us was to kill them in the womb. Somehow, this same man declared that “it is not right to impose private, religious and moral positions on public policy” in 1988.  

A younger Jackson thought the opposite. 

Jackson was a man who once said, “human beings cannot give or create life by themselves… therefore, one does not have the right to take away (through abortion) that which he does not have the ability to give.” 

While an older him would push the amoral idea of “my body, my choice,” Jackson in 1977 proclaimed the obvious: 

”Some argue, suppose the woman does not want to have the baby. They say the very fact that she does not want the baby means that the psychological damage to the child is enough to abort the baby. I disagree. The solution to that problem is not to kill the innocent baby but to deal with her values and her attitude toward life — that which has allowed her not to want the baby.” 

His younger self also proved the privacy argument that fueled Roe and Casey wrong: 

”If one accepts the position that life is private, and therefore you have the right to do with it as you please, one must also accept the conclusion of that logic. That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside your right to be concerned.” 

And Jackson knew well that the Abortion Industry does not support abortion because it is “pro-woman.” He once said “politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people.” 

Why exactly the reverend changed his position on abortion despite a solid logic for pro-life sentiments earlier in life remains debated. Some may argue political opportunism and the extremism of the Democratic party is the cause. Others point to the different ideas regarding the legal status of abortion between black and white Christian groups; black protestant groups like the AME Church and National Baptist Convention denounced abortion but still saw it as a personal decision, not a legal one. 

However, a common message comes out of all theories: the attitude we hold toward abortion and how we treat communities in need affects how Americans view abortion — and how they vote.