Few people have heard Hank Williams, Jr.’s song about a man getting revenge on the man who killed his wife and got himself acquitted, but it raises the question of what rights are. For the killer and his lawyer, rights are something governments use to protect criminals; or, to be less tendentious, they are state-backed claims: the right to a free education, to collect welfare, to be somewhere you are not wanted. For Hank Junior, rights mean something like what the Framers meant: They are an inherent part of our human nature, the flip side of duties rather than a blank check drawn on the taxpayers’ account. I have a duty to protect my wife and children, he would say, and therefore a right to kill anyone who gets away with murdering them.

The history of the word “rights” is long and confused. The Roman word ius (especially when used to translate the Greek dike) is the foundation of our legal theory of rights, and the classical terms mean primarily that which is right. Something is ius or iustum (just), when it is a well-attested and honorable custom. In this sense, it is “right” to honor one’s parents and take care of one’s kids. Some things are right by nature (or by divine commandment), others by the laws of nature, others simply by the rules of the society to which we belong, and although the fact of something being right may in some circumstances entail a corresponding claim either upon society or upon other people, such a claim is not part of the primary definition of right. Thomas Aquinas made this very clear, pointing out that the ius to take care of one’s children could not entail a claim upon the parent’s care, since dependent children were incapable (morally as well as legally) of making a claim.

From this classical and Christian perspective, therefore, there can be no women’s rights, no children’s rights, and—above all—no rights of unborn children. Husbands and parents have positive obligations to take care of wives and children, and they are prohibited by divine and natural law from abusing their prerogatives, but these obligations have nothing to do with any rights (in the modern sense).

“Well, what difference does it make, so long as we end up in the same place, that is, in the defense of the innocent?” It makes all the difference in the world. When Samuel Johnson said the Devil was the first Whig, he meant it in the sense that Satan was making a claim against the (in this case, divine) crown, demanding equality, standing up for his rights. The modern theory of rights is almost always subversive of the natural order of things, subversive of morality. If you want to talk about rights, quote Roe v. Wade—a classic defense of a woman’s right “to choose.” If you want to speak the language of Christian morality, purge the entire ideology of rights with an emetic as strong as Aristotle, Thomas, and the Bible can provide.