If Abortion is a Holocaust, What Does That Make You?
Today I got into a debate about abortion at Twitter with two fellow Tweepers. In both cases, my opponents were strongly pro-life, while I can see both the pro-life and the pro-choice side of things.
And that’s pretty much where the similarities between both sparring partners end. The first, a big Palinfan, was reasonable, calm, and asked the right questions. She and I will carry on our respectful conversation in emails, we promised each other.
The second Tweeper was more emotional. however. This person said that abortion is murder, that we are witnessing a second holocaust and that Pope Benedict was right when he said the West has a “culture of death.”
Of course, the above statements are par for the course in this debate, but every time they are thrown out there they make me wonder: if you believe this truly is a holocaust, then why are you limiting your response to ‘words’ and, at best, some peaceful activism? If this truly is a crime against humanity, if you truly deep down inside believe this to be so, why don’t you act on it?*
As my friend David Swindle wrote at his blog last year:
Let’s pose a little thought experiment here. If you’re living in Nazi Germany is it morally right to use violence to try and save the lives of Jews being exterminated in concentration camps? OK to assassinate Hitler? Acceptable to bomb axis munitions factories? Heroic to lead an assault on a concentration camp to liberate Jews?…
In the calculus of the pro-criminalization community legalized abortion is an institution far more evil than the two examples cited. And yet what are anti-abortion activists and the Republican party doing about it? They’re working within the system to try and slowly restrict access to abortion. They’re trying to win presidencies so that more conservative activist judges can be appointed to overturn Roe v. Wade. They’re protesting outside clinics to try and intimidate people into not getting abortions.
That’s the strategy? You’re going to work within the system over the course of decades to slowly change minds? While millions of people get butchered every year? Would people starving in a concentration camp have advocated such an approach?
In Nazi Germany would they be chanting slogans and waving signs outside of concentration camps? Would ending slavery have worked if abolitionists just tried to get anti-slavery politicians elected? When half the country was dependent on slavery? It parallels today when by most polls at least two thirds of people are in favor of legalized abortion.
It simply doesn’t make any sense – At all. If you really believe it’s a second holocaust, isn’t it reasonable to expect you to have acted against it more… effectively?* And if you didn’t, well, it might be best to tone down the rhetoric. Or as David puts it:
Just tell me with a straight face, directly in the eye, that if you were in Nazi Germany or the pre-Civil War south that you’d be doing exactly what you’re doing now. Or admit that you wish you could actually be a revolutionary in the name of human life, you’re just too cowardly and comfortable to do it. Or update your position and change the “I know life begins at conception” to “I think life begins at conception probably.”
*Updated and edited for Tweepers who don’t get the main point of this post: I believe that those who are passionately pro-life should tone down their rhetoric. I’m rather obviously not trying to convince them they should commit acts of violence of any kind.
There are a couple of issues that I’d raise about the argument that you, and David Swindle, are making.
First off, I think that abortion requires everyone (on all sides of the debate) to acknowledge that the life represented by an unborn human child is unique, so any comparisons to murder or right to life as it’s universally agreed upon with regard to our natural rights for ‘born’ humans, can’t really lose sight of that uniqueness (like the fact that the embryo/fetus is more completely dependent on another human being to maintain its life than a human is at any other time, and that dependence includes living inside of another human body- as well as other facts about the level of development, sentience, etc.)
Even those of us who completely see the human fetus or embryo as a human life worthy of protection can (and must) hold a somewhat contradictory thought in our minds at the same time- the fact that other people who value human life might not be automatically inclined to agree with our viewpoint. We can say that we fully believe that human life begins at conception, but we can also see the reasons (based on the unique state during that portion of the human lifespan) that others may see it otherwise. I don’t think it’s completely unreasonable, for instance, for people to see distinctions between an early embryo and a later fetus, or to say that the being is alive but not necessarily endowed yet with legal ‘personhood.’ I strongly disagree with those viewpoints (and can argue against them logically), but I don’t believe that anyone who holds them is evil or someone that I should fight against.
To some extent, that’s similar to what you feel, Michael, that you can see both sides- but it’s different in that we are firmly ON one side but can acknowledge the other. There may be reasons that some people who believe in right to life will more or less concede these opposing viewpoints while other people (like your second tweeter) choose to draw firm rhetorical lines that they refuse to cross (I’ll get to that more later.)
So, I don’t think it’s inconsistent to agree with the moral standpoint of comparing abortion to a holocaust while also seeing why it must be fought against in a different manner. Strategically in considering how to respond to those on the ‘other side’ we see that there are vast differences between people who committed and aided the holocaust against the Jews and those who participate in abortion or advocate for abortion rights. Advocating the killing of people who participate in abortion is not going to have a positive effect to protect the unborn in the same way that the war against Hitler’s Germany eventually ended that holocaust and liberated the surviving Jews. It won’t, because as soon as a prolifer advocates violence for his cause he naturally becomes subject to the criticism that he’s taking lives (even if those are ‘guilty’ rather than ‘innocent’ lives.) Convincing the potentially persuadable people about the right to life cause necessitates an extreme demonstration of consistency in protecting ALL human life (one frequent, and in my opinion legitimate, criticism, for instance is that some prolifers also support the death penalty, and I feel that’s inconsistent, wrong, and unhelpful to the cause.)
Now, as I mentioned earlier, some people would disagree with me on the rhetorical strategy and feel they must not concede any ground to those who don’t believe that human life begins at conception. They will argue strictly on emotional terms because they apparently believe that calling up extreme emotions invoked by the holocaust will provoke people to examine the situation more closely and perhaps they feel this will drive some toward agreement. I happen to think otherwise, and I believe there are valid logical arguments against the moderate prochoice viewpoints which can be made- and I think that people who are persuadable are more likely to respond to that rather than being turned off by emotional button pushing.
I meant to add to my last paragraph above- the question really is how does one respond effectively?
If violence would not achieve the desired result, then it certainly makes no sense to resort to it. And if nonviolent attempts to reach hearts and minds is the most likely course toward change, then that itself IS the demonstration of commitment to the belief of the importance of the cause.
I don’t get this argument. Slavery was ended by the legislative process, and by amendment, which is one of the most difficult possible ways to do it.
Yes, if socons want to end abortion, they will have to do it conservatively (pun fully intended).
Yet, if the South is right, what are we to do with that embarrassing, annoying document, “The Declaration of Independence?” What of its conceits? “All men…CREATED equal,” “inalienable rights,” “life,” “liberty,” and so on and so forth? What on earth are we to do with this?
Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does, may it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution.
-John Quincy Adams speech from The Amistad.
Enter 2009….
You know Adams you and your abolitionists talking about civil war really need to tone down their rhetoric….and that Thomas Paine character is way over the top ….
The difference between the victims of the Nazi holocaust and those of the abortion holocaust is who is killing whom. A mother killing her own child has to be approached differently from a Nazi killing a Jew. Forty percent of women in the US over 40 have done this – and because its legal, it’s rationalized as being a “right”. Abortion is embedded in our society. It’s mass psychosis that we accept this. Calling it what it is is designed to wake people up – to shake them out of their denial. Period.
Abortion is murder. There is no denying that the unborn child is alive, it has its own heart that beats twice as fast as ours. Any one that feels different is just simply trying to rationalize to themselves so that they feel better about killing a child that can't defend itself. I can easily understand the view of abortion as a holocaust.