Abraham Lincoln quoted Mt 12:25 to the Illinois Republican State Convention in 1858, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” and made himself quite explicit in the next sentence. “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

It is quite clear that the United States is again becoming half slave and half free. I have seen maps that result from attempts to predict which states will deny the right to abortion and which maintain it. It is easily prediccted that legislatures in the former slave states as well as in some former free states will forbid abortion in order to secure for themselves the anti-abortion vote. 

Whether the United States can endure for any length of time under this division is open to question. For in time there will be, I think, a significant emigration from slave states to free states. This will leave the primitive states more primitive still and add to the dynamism of the free states, for these migrants will be the type of people who seek to build rather than to rule their communities.