Autumn just isn’t the same without freshly sharpened pencils, new library cards, and university pro-life clubs fighting just to be able to exercise their inherent free speech.
McGill U’s Choose Life plans to host Jojo Ruba’s “Echoes of the Holocaust” on October 6th. There’s been a motion to have the event cancelled. (Here I’m supposed to make an intelligent comment about how universities are supposed to be a refuge for freethinkers and bastion of idea-sharing. But I think we’ve used all those quips up already.)
Motion RE: Echoes of the Holocaust Event
Whereas “Echoes of the Holocaust” is an event by the SSMU club Choose Life scheduled for Tuesday October 6 at 6 pm in Leacock 232;
Whereas at the event, speaker Jose “Jojo” Ruba will discuss how “the dehumanization and denial of personhood has justified some of the greatest affronts to human dignity that the world has seen, including [abortion and] the Holocaust” and show both graphic Holocaust and abortion imagery;
Whereas this comparison between abortion and the Holocaust insults and slanders the millions of post-abortive women who made the incredibly difficult and personal decision to have an abortion, and belittles the racist and hateful motivations of the Nazi movement and genocide of six million people;
Whereas according to the SSMU Constitution and Equity Policy; the SSMU has a responsibility to “demonstrating leadership in matters of social justice” and to “promote an anti-oppressive environment that fosters a culture of respect”;
Whereas this event violates tenets of social justice, anti-oppression, and respect;
Be it resolved the SSMU officially and publically censure this event;
Be it further resolved that the SSMU demand that the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson intervene in order to cancel the event regardless of any inconvenience this will cause Jose “Jojo” Ruba or the Choose Life Club.
Moved by: Sarah Olle
Seconded by: Sarah Woolf
The past summer sure did fly by, didn’t it?
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Rebecca adds: “Whereas this comparison between abortion and the Holocaust […] belittles the racist and hateful motivations of the Nazi movement and genocide of six million people …” (I think they mean “diminishes” and not “belittles”, for what it’s worth.)
I find this sentiment hard to disagree with, even though on the broader issues – free speech and abortion – I’m against the Students’ Union positions and actions. Splashy statements may raise awareness and even change minds, but my initial reaction to the “Abortion = Holocaust” trope is the same as to PETA’s “KFC = Holocaust” ads: at best, this reflects a profound ignorance of history, and at worst, deliberate mockery of the Holocaust and its victims. Since I support free speech, I support the right of students publicly to draw that analogy; since I am pro-life, I wish they wouldn’t, so they don’t turn off people who might be open to their message if it were presented in less inflammatory terms.
On a related topic, one of my goals is to persuade more Jews that abortion on demand is completely incompatible with the Torah. There are lots of reasons why secular, liberal Jews are pro-abortion, and many of them are the same reasons why secular, liberal non-Jews are pro-abortion – but throwing around the Holocaust to score political points no doubt plays a role too, however small.
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Brigitte adds (Friday morning): I gather the motion has passed. I’m not sure whether that means the event is cancelled.
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Tanya says: The event’s been censured by SSMU. Should Choose Life not cancel the event, it loses its Student Society funding. (Marx would be proud.)
by 
Has anyone read the comments here? I’d be great as prolifers if you could ad some of your own
http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/compassion-in-the-face-of-parental-consent
☺
Hi Anne. You said, “I’m not sure if you detected this, but I am pro-choice.” I hadn’t, but thanks for telling me. It is very clear to me now why you don’t understand the comparison. Unless you consider abortion a crime against humanity that should be against the law, you’re not going to see it as being parallel to the Holocaust. So I encourage you to read up on the pro-life arguments here: http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/faq.html
I didn’t single out women but listed everyone who bears responsibility for abortion. As for who specifically is like the Nazis/SS, that parallel would be to Planned Parenthood.
As for women who have abortions going to jail, consider this: In 2008, Penny Boudreau killed her 12-year-old daughter Carissa in Nova Scotia. She was sentenced to life in prison.
What if, instead of being 12 years old, Carissa had been 12 weeks old, in utero? What if her mother killed her through abortion?
A victim’s age does not change the fact that victimization occurred. In other words, since the unborn are just as human as the born, their deaths are just as tragic.
So then, why wouldn’t we have jail sentences for those who kill the unborn like we do for those who kill the born? Now, before my remarks are taken out of context, know this:
Currently, abortion is legal. And women who have abortions are not breaking a law in Canadian society. I am therefore not proposing that women who have had legal abortions should go to jail. I am proposing that, after the law has changed, jail time should be a possible outcome for those who commit the crime of abortion.
I am a firm believer that changing public policy requires changing public opinion. In other words, not only should abortion be illegal, it should be unthinkable.
Indeed, by the time the law on abortion is changed, attitudes about abortion will have changed as well. And the number of women who have abortions then will be comparable to the number of women who, like Penny Boudreau, strangle their daughters: very, very few.
It is worth pointing out that even in situations where women kill their born children, they don’t always go to jail. Their behavior is rightly classified as immoral, but a particular punishment may not be applied due to factors such as mental instability.
Consider Andrea Yates, the American woman who killed her 5 children by drowning them in the bathtub. While she was originally sentenced to life in prison, that was changed on appeal where it was ruled she was not guilty on grounds of insanity.
So even among women who have abortions, questions would need to be asked about mental stability and consent. For example, it’s possible that a woman is forced, by a boyfriend or parent, to have an abortion against her will. Certainly such a woman would not be culpable in the way a woman who freely chooses abortion would be.
Abortion advocates often raise the question of women going to jail to make pro-lifers look insensitive. And we do—-if we ignore the fundamental question in the abortion debate: What are the unborn?
In other words, I will concede that my position is flawed, and insensitive, if the unborn are not human. But if they are human, then the position that’s truly insensitive and deeply flawed is the one that doesn’t seek a legal remedy for the slaughter of an innocent person.
“Comparing abortion to the Holocaust does not trivialize the Holocaust. Those who suggest that it does still have not really come to terms with the horror of abortion.”
Pro-lifers equating abortion with the Holocaust are the mirror image of pro-choicers equating the absence of abortion with slavery and rape. Rhetorical excess, faulty logic and hysterical analogies with past atrocities are no substitute for reason, wisdom and morality.
Hi Rebecca, did you read the two links I provided? Like I said to Anne, I agree with you there are differences but do you agree with me there are similarities?
Also, Anne mentioned she’s pro-choice. I’m wondering specifically what your views are on abortion. In other words, do you hold to the statement that all abortions are immoral and should be against the law? If not, how would you describe your view?
Waiting for a response here to the questions posed above. Very interesting discussion so far but it needs respolution. I am pro-woman-pro-life” just not at the expense of life that is all.
Stephanie,
**Unless you consider abortion a crime against humanity that should be against the law, you’re not going to see it as being parallel to the Holocaust.**
This is one of many parts that confuses me, though, about the use of this language. Even though you state that abortion is currently legal, and you wouldn’t promote any sort of punishment until after it was ruled illegal, and you wouldn’t put those who had an abortion while legal in jail … that is not something that someone would do against a true crime of humanity. Even if an action is declared legal somewhere, there’d still be some sort of prosecution if it is a crime against humanity.
Also, I didn’t see an answer to my question about Rwanda. Do you hold everyone accountable for that, too, the way you do with abortion?
Perhaps I can explain my lack of seeing similarities this way: when I look at a picture of the Holocaust victims or the Rwanda victims, I’m not just seeing the bodies. I’m seeing the terror that was applied to them, the sadism, the hatred. There’s a whole involvement of the victim there, living through the beatings, the starvation, watching the Nazis say they were nothing, deserved to die, worthless … and then I look a picture of an aborted embryo/fetus. I can’t apply the same concepts. I can’t look at a Holocaust victim and say that the terror you experienced was the same as the embryo/fetus, because then I’m dismissing what that Holocaust victim actually experienced and putting it on the same level with an entity that most likely can’t experience pain at that point, especially as an embryo. — per scientific circles that the necessary components for feeling pain aren’t developed until the 20th week of gestation. I’m using to see if I can truly look someone who’s experienced that level of victimization and say that it’s similar to abortion. I can’t, because then I’m negating the victim’s experience entirely. (Note: I’m using the time frame from the most common time to get an abortion, the first trimester. Abortions in later trimesters are in a different category). And, yes, I know you addressed this in your faq. But this isn’t using the lack of pain as justification for abortion, it’s explaining whether I can find the context of the two similar. Even with the examples you provided in your faq about an anesthetic for rape or robbery, or even the Nazis killing the Jews. It’s only addressing the physical component of the act, and the pain is also caused on the emotional/mental scale as well. Even if the rape victim can’t feel physical pain during the act itself, there is still pain. Even if the Jews couldn’t feel pain at the moment of death, there are all the events leading up to it, there is the Nazis overall treatment of them on the emotional scale.
**I didn’t single out women but listed everyone who bears responsibility for abortion. As for who specifically is like the Nazis/SS, that parallel would be to Planned Parenthood.**
I know you didn’t, but the reason why I focus on women is because Planned Parenthood offering abortion services is meaningless unless a woman acts on that service. Which is why I list her as the primary reason.
**What if, instead of being 12 years old, Carissa had been 12 weeks old, in utero? What if her mother killed her through abortion?**
Your faq does addresses the issue of personhood as determine subjectively unless we say a person is a member of the human species, no matter what, and too often people use an arbitrary concept of personhood to exclude others, or worse. But if we go down to the fact that at the very beginning, 23 chromosomes are joined with 23 other chromosomes, and thus we have 46 new ones and thus a complete whole new person … I see that as biological reductionism. It takes everything about people and reduces them to those 46 chromosomes. And people are more than that, we tend to treat them as more than that. They’re a combination of biology and environment. In looking at this question, who Carissa is is more than mere biology, and so the abortion wouldn’t have occurred to Carissa as she was known at the time. When we look at pictures, we don’t say, “It’s 46 chromosomes” or “It’s a heartbeat.” We go beyond that. Or, the common analogy is as you said above, “Just like you can’t kill a two year old, you can’t abort a four week embryo. Both are human.” But when I reverse that, and say to someone, “You are exactly like a four week old embryo,” I think a lot of people would say that there are differences, because they’re more than just those components that make up an embryo. Even with a newborn, I would think people would have that same reaction, saying that a newborn is more than just the components in the four week old embryo.
**Abortion advocates often raise the question of women going to jail to make pro-lifers look insensitive.**
Actually, I raise it because I’m curious about the consistency. As you said, women go to jail for killing their born offspring. Logically, the same should apply to abortion in the pro-life view. Yet too often, I don’t see people following through, which is inconsistent or makes me question their views on the moral capacity of women. I also raise it because it means that if abortion is illegal, we are saying that women should go to jail for ending their pregnancies.
That’s never been the fundamental question in the abortion debate for me, though. But that’s because I don’t see how we can exist in a society where the two are treated equal, when both are dependent on the same body. Who gets to decide how the body is used? Whose interests are paramount when it comes to using the body? You’ve addressed this in your faq of whether or not it’s the woman’s body, and it sounds like you’ve concluded the question is invalid because it’s not the woman’s body. But if one is telling the woman she has to remain pregnant, and thus still telling a woman what to do with her body. Yes, parents can be told they must work to provide for children, and yes, they cannot engage in child neglect. But working is not in the same arena as pregnancy, nor is child neglect. For a lot of pro-choicers, that’s where the insensitivity comes in. It’s telling women that as soon as they’re pregnant, everything else about them and their life doesn’t matter, and has become secondary. All that matters is that they are pregnant, and must act accordingly. Whereas I know for you, it works in reverse, and the fundamental question focuses on the unborn.
Suricou,
You said: “Between hormonal contraception and the condom, it has now become possible to enjoy sex purely for recreation and bonding, eliminating the possibility of an intended offspring.”
Apparently you’ve never done the math. The typical use failure rate for the pill is 8%, and for the condom 15% (source: http://www.teachingsexualhealth.ca/media/pdf/BirthControlTable2005.pdf )
So the probability that both methods will fail at the same time is 0.08 x 0.15 = 0.012, or 1%.
Which isn’t bad at all; a woman has a 98.8% chance of not getting pregnant in one year. However, over a period of ten years, the chance that she won’t get pregnant is 0.988 (to the power of) 10= 0.888. Over the course of a woman’s reproductive life, (ie. ages 15-45) the chance that she won’t get pregnant is 0.988 (to the power of)30 = 0.696.
You’d better hope and pray that you aren’t one of those 30 women in 100.
@ Anne,
**I raise it [the question of women going to jail] because I’m curious about the consistency. As you said, women go to jail for killing their born offspring. Logically, the same should apply to abortion in the pro-life view. Yet too often, I don’t see people following through, which is inconsistent or makes me question their views on the moral capacity of women. I also raise it because it means that if abortion is illegal, we are saying that women should go to jail for ending their pregnancies. **
Actually, I think the reason that pro-lifers don’t want aborted women prosecuted is a practical one.
How would you catch ’em?
When a woman aborts, plenty of times the only people who know that fetus ever existed are the woman and her doctor. Who are they going to tell? No missing person report is ever filed, and the corpse is between the size of a thimble and a prune. Is someone actually going to go through crushed up bloody tissues looking for these corpses? And even if they did, and did find a corpse, how would they link it to its mother? Random DNA tests of all women in the vicinity? It is simply not going to happen.
Really, the only time we will be able to conclusively say that a woman has aborted is if she comes forward and admits it herself.
Which leads to a rather horrifying conclusion. If we start charging women who have had abortions, women who are suffering post-abortion complications will not come forward for treatment for fear of prosecution. Minor infections will turn life-threatening. Women *will* die needlessly from illegal abortions.
There is more than enough death already from abortion. No one wants to see women die needlessly.
Anne, thank you for your response to me. I think Stephanie’s and Melissa’s comments since then have developed and expressed my further thinking about your response. I want now to comment on the first point in your most recent response to Stephanie.
You said to Stephanie, “Even though you state that abortion is currently legal, and you wouldn’t promote any sort of punishment until after it was ruled illegal, and you wouldn’t put those who had an abortion while legal in jail … that is not something that someone would do against a true crime of humanity.”
What is a “crime against humanity”? First of all, what is a crime? My Concise Oxford Dictionary of 1964 defines a CRIME as an “act (usually grave offense) punishable by law; evil act; sin.” According to the first meaning given, abortion cannot be a crime until after it is made illegal.
But what are “crimes against humanity”? Are there any other kinds of crimes? I’m not sure that it is the civil government’s place to punish crimes specifically against God, for example. Canada isn’t a theocracy as Israel was. And, for obvious reasons, I’m not an enthusiast of those who might want to champion crimes against “Mother Earth.” Judeo-Christian morality and its one or two thousand-year influence on Western civilization originally informed our justice system. That morality regards abortion as an evil act and a sin.
To define “crimes against humanity,” Wikipedia currently uses the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum. The definition says that crimes against humanity are “a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy… or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority.” Abortion clearly fits this definition.
Then why would we not punish women for their legal abortions? The reason is that crimes against humanity were intended to restrain national governments, not individual citizens. There is already a criminal code for the individual citizen, and it is made by his government. The government is responsible for the policies which allow crimes against humanity to occur. (And if a democracy is rule by the people, then we are all responsible for the abortion holocaust.)
The first use of the concept of “crimes against humanity,” the current Wikipedia article says, was a joint statement, part of which read as follows: “In view of these new crimes of Ottoman Empire against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.” Take a look at the other two examples, the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo trials. Only the leaders of the country were held responsible.
If the hundreds or thousands of individual guards and technicians weren’t punished for following orders and killing Jews, then neither should mothers be punished for their legal abortions.
You further said, “Even if an action is declared legal somewhere, there’d still be some sort of prosecution if it is a crime against humanity.” Why do you say so? First of all, the whole point of the concept of “crimes against humanity” is that they are legal in the nation in which they occur. Secondly, there are all kinds of “alleged crimes against humanity.” A Wikipedia entry on it says that the term [“crimes against humanity”] has been criticized for being extremely vague and for being politically defined. For example, Nazi attempts to eliminate certain ethnic groups are widely recognized as having been crimes against humanity, yet Soviet and American persecutions of certain groups are not.” Then follows a long list of alleged crimes against humanity. Finally, abortions are prosecuted in many nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Chilean women go to prison for having an illegal abortion.
Anne, here’s a very short comment on your second point in your most recent response to Stephanie. You said, “Perhaps I can explain my lack of seeing similarities this way…” Then you proceeded to talk about pain. Much later in the same paragraph, still talking about pain, you said, “But this isn’t using the lack of pain as justification for abortion, it’s explaining whether I can find the context of the two similar.” I think your single-minded focus on pain, however, shows that you think the level of pain involved is the only critical element of a holocaust. So you are trying to justify abortion by its lack of pain (for a child in the first trimester).
Let’s make the pain element a significant difference. Are there similarities? Are they significant enough to warrant the comparison?
Consider what Rebecca Walberg has said so far:
Rebecca (in the post): Splashy statements may raise awareness and even change minds, but my initial reaction to the “Abortion = Holocaust” trope is the same as to PETA’s “KFC = Holocaust” ads: at best, this reflects a profound ignorance of history, and at worst, deliberate mockery of the Holocaust and its victims. Since I support free speech, I support the right of students publicly to draw that analogy; since I am pro-life, I wish they wouldn’t, so they don’t turn off people who might be open to their message if it were presented in less inflammatory terms.
me: Please show me these pro-lifers’ profound ignorance of history, Rebecca. Where is the deliberate mockery of the Holocaust and its victims? These are serious charges, but can you substantiate them?
Rebecca (06 Oct at 7:10 pm): [T]here’s an intellectual laziness in casually invoking the Holocaust to signify evil. It’s as if a novel could only convey that a character is an antagonist by having him drooling, with a hunched back and a wicked cackle, or if a movie villain literally resorted to mustache-twirling to get across that he’s the bad guy.
me: Are pro-lifers casually invoking the Holocaust?
Rebecca (07 Oct at 11:06 am): Pro-lifers equating abortion with the Holocaust are the mirror image of pro-choicers equating the absence of abortion with slavery and rape. Rhetorical excess, faulty logic and hysterical analogies with past atrocities are no substitute for reason, wisdom and morality.
me: These pro-lifers and pro-choicers are a mirror image just because you say so? Logically it’s possible that pro-lifers make a strong case and pro-choicers a weak case. I would say that you yourself need to avoid rhetorical excess and show some logic. Are you being intellectually lazy?
Comparing abortion to the Holocaust does not trivialize the Holocaust. Those who suggest that it does still have not really come to terms with the horror of abortion. Whether they intend to or not, I think that they actually trivialize abortion.
Jon, your comments to Rebecca I couldn’t have said better myself. Wow. Thank you for your knowledge and wisdom.
Ouch! When Jon said “Comparing abortion to the Holocaust does not trivialize the Holocaust. Those who suggest that it does still have not really come to terms with the horror of abortion. Whether they intend to or not, I think that they actually trivialize abortion.” I think he left a mark.
I believe pro-lifers need to accept the reality of abortion before they actually step into the ring to fight against it. There is a world out there that wants nothing better than to hide the truth about this holocaust behind the opaque windows of the operating room and the doors abortion clinics. It may not be a popular stand but speaking truth is always a no fail strategy.
I’ll just ask once more for prolifers here to make comments. There are only a couple of prolifers here and we could use some help at this forum
Thanks,
Michelle
http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/compassion-in-the-face-of-parental-consent/#comment-236681