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.)








Lame. I’m livid, but not surprised.
I was present at SMU when Jose Ruba presented the same talk with the same name. The presentation was interrupted within seconds by 8 protestors who shouted and chanted for 40 minutes. Security never stepped in to stop them and eventually, a university official was called in who shut down the talk and asked us to move off campus to continue.
The pro-choice crowd stated that they were enraged by the use of the word Holocaust and that Ruba was comparing women who had abortions to Nazis. But they never listened to one sentence he had to say. The reality is that they would shout down anyone who gave a pro-life presentation, because they cannot afford to have anyone hear the reality about abortion.
Ruba proceeded to speak, even though he could not be heard and he showed the video, 4 minutes long, that shows the bloody bodies of the dismembered fetuses. It was very interesting to see that the protestors grew silent when the mutilated bodies were shown and one girl was seen sobbing in the arms of another.
What they are afraid of is seeing the horrible reality of abortion, especially when they have to admit they were responsible for it.
I agree with Rebecca. Abortion is a tragedy in and of itself and as Julie’s comment points out, the images of that are gruesome enough and stand on their own. No further comment is needed.
Invoking ‘nazi’ or the holocaust into any debate not only dimishes the holocaust, but is a very poor debating tactic. I really wish prominent pro-lifers like Ruba would stick to talking about abortion.
I understand the uneasiness regarding the Holocaust and abortion comparisons.
That said, there are plenty of legitmate comparisons to be made between abortion and the Holocaust. Of course the two aren’t exactly the same. But they’re similar in their scope, and both rely on silencing dissent and downplaying the humanity of the group being oppressed to legitimize themselves.
Pro-choicers justify abortion by saying they’re protecting a woman’s right to choose. Hitler et al. justified the Holocaust and his territorial aggression by saying they were protecting the Germans’ right to Lebensraum.
Same pattern. “We’re oppressing and destroying people but it’s ok because we’re more free because of it.”
In fact, look at any instance of wide-spread oppression, and at least one of two things will be present. 1) The humanity of the oppressed will be diminished, and 2) The group doing the oppressing justifies it by saying (explicitly or implicitly) they’ve got more liberty because of it.
The Holocaust, abortion, apartheid, slavery. You name it.
Rebecca, I’m a Choose Life member and a former McGill student with a degree in Jewish Studies. I understand your and others’ discomfort and anger about the title of the talk. In fact, at the meeting at which we discussed which talk Mr. Ruba should give, the point came up that though the content presented an important argument (i.e., dehumanizing a group of people leads to justifying their murder), the title was most unfortunate and would only serve to make people angry.
Jordan explains quite succinctly the reasoning behind the talk, so I won’t repeat it here. But suffice it to say that it was a Holocaust education trip that I took in Poland with the March of Remembrance and Hope in 2006 that really “turned” me pro-life. In fact, I remember discussing it with another girl from the trip on the plane ride home after being verbally attacked by a different group member for some off-handed comment about how abortion takes the life of a person. I couldn’t articulate it then because I was afraid to offend people further, but I regret even now that I did not say that the reason the trip had pushed me into the realm of “definitely pro-life” was because I had seen the horrors that can be wrought when a certain group of people manage to convince others that another group of people is not human because they have this or that trait.
So, while you are right that the title is inflammatory, and I agree that this is unfortunate, I do think that ultimately the content of the talk will bring up important issues that must be addressed.
In other news, the council has voted to censure us and to demand that the Deupty Provost cancel our event, and they also included a coda that stated that if we continue with the event anyway, we will never again be eligible for funding from the SSMU. C’est la vie pour la vie, je pense.
McMaster Lifeline had Jojo talk here on “Echoes of the Holocaust” just a week ago at McMaster University, and it was excellent. I was unsure of how he would go about it as I had never seen the presentation before, but when leaving the auditorium I had been convinced of the comparisons. I wish more people could see his presentation!
We hope to learn from past genocides, like the Holocaust, to make sure that nothing like it never happens again. But abortion is here, using the same dehumanizing language that the Nazi’s and slave owners used, and producing the same results (massive loss of life). We haven’t learned our lesson yet.
As this blog’s only pro-choicer, I’d like to say holocaust comparisons like this are not the way to go about convincing us. It’s a great way to get pro-lifers more enthusiastic in their campaigning, but preaching to the choir is all it’s good for.
I can think of a few ways that might be quite effective in winning over pro-choicers, but this is not one of them.
“I can think of a few ways that might be quite effective in winning over pro-choicers, but this is not one of them.”
Really, Suricou? Please enlighten us.
(Nasty spam filter… i’ll try splitting this)
I can try.
I think the first problem you’ve got is that us pro-choicers don’t consider you trustworthy. Your motivations are suspect, because pro-life campaigners tend also to support things like abstinance-only education, stricter prohibition of pornography, prohibiting gay marriage and so on that combine to make you look like sex-hating puritans. I’m not saying that’s an accurate view, but it is a widespread one, and before pro-choicers are going to even consider any arguments you make they will just dismiss and ignore you because of this impression.
I think sex-ed is a particually important one – more pro-choicers believe abstinance-only education to be ineffective at best and certinly less effective than comprehensive, so when someone calls for the end of abortion while also rejecting what is considered the most effective way to prevent unwanted pregnency, it comes across as contradictory.
So my first piece of advice: Ideally, you need to either side against abstinance-only, or at least stop promoting it. This also goes for other sexually-related issues. No more talking about the Homosexual Agenda or the need to defend traditional marriage. No more rants about how the sexualisation of advertising is corrupting society. No more demanding distributors of pornography go to jail. But these are less important than the sex-ed.
If you insist on holding those position too, then keep it seperate. Seperate blogs, seperate campaign organisations, and never let them get close.
Pro-choicers are going to be much more willing to listen to someone who agrees with them that much, rather then just dismiss all pro-lifers as overreligious proponents of a 1950’s social code. This isn’t going to win them to your side straight away, but at least it’ll make them seriously think about the merits of your arguments – and perhaps some of them will accept that restrictions on abortion are justified in the interests of human rights.
I’m not sure how well religious arguments fly with Americans, but don’t even bother trying that in Europe :> We arn’t interested.
Secondly, you need to dump the crazy. The organised pro-life movement is stricken by a plaque of extreme rhetoric, like the holocaust display. It goes all the way from senators down to the pastors of local churches. It’s evident every time someone refers to a clinic as an ‘abortion mill’ or makes a nazi comparison. This is not helping your cause. Whenever something like that is said it reflects on all pro-lifers. At best it makes them look like idiots, and at worst it makes them look like potentially violent extremist idiots. Again, us pro-choicers arn’t going to listen to you if we don’t first respect you, and right now pro-lifers arn’t earning much respect.
To follow up on Suricou’s post — and I’m using US numbers here, as that’s what I’m familiar with. Perhaps Canada’s pro-life groups behave differently.
But it would also help if we could see pro-life groups try and eliminate the reasons behind the abortions, and be just as vocal about that as they are about making it illegal. A lot of reasons I find for abortions are economic or educational. Women feel that they can’t afford to have a child for a variety of reasons. If they were in a better place economically, then perhaps they’d make a different choice. There was a news article recently in the US, talking about how some pro-life groups were working with pro-choice groups to try and reduce the number of abortions. Other pro-life groups said that the first pro-life groups were selling out, and even said that addressing social conditions wouldn’t fix the abortion issue because social conditions aren’t a factor. Given the economic reasons are a primary one for abortions, and someone in poverty is more likely to *have* an abortion in the first place, social conditions are huge.
Instead, the impression I often get is that pro-lifers feel if abortion were made illegal, it would suddenly all go away. Problem solved, no more abortions. And that is so far from what would actually happen. Women would still have abortions, because all the factors driving those abortions are still in place. In 2003 alone, it was reported that there were 42 million abortions worldwide. That number is staggering to me, and a huge portion of those were in countries where it was illegal.
(I’m also hitting the spam filter, so I’ll try splitting this, too)
Suricou Raven: Believe it or not, for once I am in complete agreement with you. I think the pro-life movement has done itself incalculable harm by allowing itself to be associated with right-wing ideologies. I don’t believe that the conservative/religious rhetoric represents all pro-lifers but it is certainly pushed by the likes of James Dobson and reflected back at the rest of society by a largely passive press (lazy? liberal? just no longer capable of thinking critically? I don’t know, but press coverage of the abortion issue in the US is terrible).
Just wondering about one thing re many pro-lifers being on the conservative side of things. Do you think maybe it’s possible that pro-life leftists are a rarity? That conservative pro-lifers are pro-life because they’re conservative, not the other way around?
There are a few bright spots, such as:
The Pro-life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians
Secular Pro-Life
Consistent Life
Feminists for Life
I am hopeful that organizations like this are gaining ground but they have to spend as much energy trying to get mainstream pro-lifers to accept them (and allow them a place at events like the March for Life) as they do trying to stand up for their pro-life beliefs in the face of a pro-choice society.
I realize that the pro-lifers on this blog tend to be more conservative than I am, but I hope that you will consider SR’s comments carefully. These are important issues she (he?) raises and pro-lifers would do well to pay attention.
PS I initially had links for each of the above organizations, but I think those were what were getting blocked. If anyone is interested, you can Google any of the names and they’ll come right up.
Pro-life leftists are relatively rare but I think there may be more of us around than either pro-choicers or conservative pro-lifers realize.
I was uncomfortable with the idea of abortion for years before I got around to actually calling myself pro-life. For a long time I was put off by the conservative rhetoric of the mainstream prolife movement. I have met fellow liberals who feel similarly: their feelings about abortion range from uncomfortable to horrified but they don’t want to be associated with a movement that they perceive to be full of hyper-religious right-wingers.
Make room for us. We’re out there. We want to help.
I find that there are left-wing pro-lifers particularly in religious – Christian – circles. I know more with a Protestant/Anabaptist slant, but I also know some Catholics who are liberation-theology-left on the ideological spectrum, and also take the sanctity of unborn life seriously.
Thank you, Suricou, Anne, and others, for your thoughts. Being a religious person myself who also agrees with some of the other things mentioned (though I was pro-life before I was religious), I tend to agree with you on the public image of pro-lifers/Christians/right-wingers in the media, especially when they are all lumped together like that.
This has been a very difficult week, so I will save my other thoughts until I am sure that I can make them coherent.
Truth is truth. Abortion may be a “personal decision” but it also ends the life of a human being who is entirely defenceless. In 30 years, in North America alone, the number of human beings who were conceived but never born, solely as a result of a personal decision, number at least in the tens of millions. That is what should be shocking, distasteful and repellant to all. Trying to shame those who believe that abortion is a grave wrong, on a par with the Holocaust, that must be righted, sooner rather than later, diminishes the impact of that truth. In addition, even if it were merely a debating tactic, this fearless truth telling is often effective where a more nuanced approach leaves many unmoved.
“especially when they are all lumped together like that. ”
The lumping-in is accurate. While there are plenty of single-issue pro-life advocacy organisations, there are also many right-wing organisations which combine pro-life campaigning with the other staples of social conservatism. It really should seem strange that there is such a strong correlation between opposition to abortion and, for example, support for the prohibition of pornography. It’s hard to find any way in which these two are connected, and yet still knowing someone’s position on one issue is a good predictor of their position on the other. This bundling of issues, forcing people to choose between the liberal and conservative factions, is one of the most serious flaws in modern American politics.
I’ll note quickly that opposition to pornography can be found on both the left and the right. Notable feminists like Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin spent large chunks of their careers fighting it. Currently it isn’t much of an issue either way here. A better example would be gay marriage which has nothing to do with abortion but seems to go hand-in-hand with it at every turn.
“This bundling of issues, forcing people to choose between the liberal and conservative factions, is one of the most serious flaws in modern American politics.”
Agreed. Part of the problem may lie in our two-party political system which has largely divided all the issues between them leaving Americans to choose whichever group of unrelated issues is less offensive to them. (Abortion opponents certainly aren’t helping, though.)
SarahB, I just picked the first issue that came to mind. I could have chosen better. Your example is better.
I’m in complete agreement about the two-party political system. Two parties and no other option worth considering just does not make for a good political environment. But the two have so effectively sealed the arena that no third party or independant has the slightest hope of achieving enough influence to become significent beyond the local level.
The only hope I can see for this to change would be if one party or the other were to somehow be eliminated as a serious contender – perhaps a series of extremally severe scandals, or a long run of unfortunate deaths. Both the republican and democartic parties are comprised of many diverse internal factions unified only by their shared loatheing of the opposising party and the need for mutual support – deprive them of a common enemy, and fragmentation would soon occur.
Suricou Raven,
“I think the first problem you’ve got is that us pro-choicers don’t consider you trustworthy. Your motivations are suspect, because pro-life campaigners tend also to support things like …”
This, and most of what follows in your comments above, amounts to a species of ad hominem attack. With no rational argument against the pro-life position, you resort instead to attacking the people who hold that position.
I am one of those few pro-life leftists… though I am by no means extremely far left (you know, when stuff stops making sense.) I vote New Democrat and I am fairly active in the New Democratic Party (despite their open affinity for abortion.) I can proudly say that, when the abortion debate comes up, I do take the pro-life position, even in Dipper company 😛
If one of the other major parties took a principled, (though non-punitive toward women) stance against abortion, I’d probably flip-flop in an instant. Even if it were the Greens or Bloc! Hell, I’d send the Bloc a twenty and spoil my ballot if they’d adopt a pro-life position.
Jordan: I’m curious – if there was a single-issue party against abortion, but it was mainly populated by annoying right-wingers like me, would you vote for it? Say, if the party swore it would NOT take a position on other social issues (say, daycare) or economic issues? Would you be tempted?
Dan, I think you missed the point. Yes, it’s an ad hominium attack. But that doesn’t matter. I was only giving PR advice, not trying to debate the ethics of abortion. I explained why pro-choicers don’t listen to pro-lifers – I never claimed their reason was entirely rational.
Dan, SR is pointing out that one of the biggest problems facing the pro-life movement is our reputation. We oppose abortion: okay, fine. Plenty of people can understand that. Unfortunately, “we” also oppose contraception and sex education, two essential ways of preventing unwanted pregnancies. “We” oppose emergency contraception even in the case of rape. “We” oppose single parenthood. “We” unrealistically think that if everyone just waited until they were married to have sex, everything would be fine (somehow forgetting that married people use contraception and sometimes have abortions). To be extra damning, “we” oppose things like daycare and insist that mothers should stay home to raise their children, apparently forgetting that for a huge number of families that isn’t an economically viable option. Nonetheless, “we” oppose any measure such as healthcare reform, that might help those struggling families.So what’s left? Oh, right: we’re okay with adoption–as long as the adoptive parents aren’t single or gay.
Obviously, not all pro-lifers believe all these things. But those that do have dominated the debate making us out to be hypocritical, unrealistic religious nuts who don’t care about unborn babies nearly as much as they care about controlling and dominating women. Pro-choicers LOVE this. It works completely to their advantage.
SarahB: “We” have been put into a box. Do you really think “we” should spend all our time and effort trying to rectify what mass misconceptions are out there?
Tanya: in a word, YES. Those mass misconceptions are a huge part of what prevents the ethical arguments against abortion from being taken seriously. We can’t rectify all misconceptions, certainly not overnight, but we owe to ourselves to try. If we’re serious about trying to prevent abortion, we should be focusing on the true nastiness that is abortion and not get sidetracked by other issues.
The problem I am seeing with this line of logic, that the “lumping” of beliefs is unwise, is that most of those who are willing to vocally oppose abortion do oppose same sex marriage and do support teaching about sexual purity.
As complex people, none of us tend to only pick one thing we support/oppose and actively repress all other thoughts and beliefs. We just aren’t that single minded. While you will often focus on one aspect more than others, it doesn’t mean you never voice up on the other issues you are also interested in (for example, I am working with Jojo and others on a project that is not focused on abortion, though some discussions may lead there without problem since our commonality includes opposition to abortion).
So just as you will see this “lumping” together of beliefs in individuals, it naturally expands to groups, and even political parties.
This isn’t something unique to abortion either. It is something that could be applied to virtually every moral issue; often if someone says they believe X you can correctly guess they believe Y a majority of the time. While there will always be exceptions and even issues that, overtime, cross such boundaries, it is unrealistic to expect people to hold & promote one position on one topic to the exclusion of everything else.
As a socially conservative pro-lifer I’ll add my perspective in the chance that enlightenment is the goal.
These things are all closely related because they are all part of a belief in the intrinsic value of human life and the sacredness of human sexuality. My support for these related issues is not out of a ‘hate’ of sex, but out of a profound gratefulness for our human sexuality, and a respect for the importance of it in our ability to be entirely human.
(Part 2)
Of course, without an understanding of a larger purpose and a deeper meaning to ‘life’, this would be hard to swallow. For me, its all part a the same very consistent and central belief. It cannot be separated. I feel badly for those who cannot grasp the relevance, but I cannot really do any thing about it. Perhaps the leftist prolifers should work on converting the leftist pro-choicers. That way those inhabiting the same world would be able to ‘communicate’ their meaning better?
As far as Jojo’s presentation goes, looking around the world at the culture of death being promoted by those who support and push abortion/contraception/population control/homosexual education (that would be in large part, the UN) I see that the left has no difficulty addressing all these things as one package, so I wonder why it seems strange that the so-cons would do the same?
Denis and lwestin, I would never ask anyone to hide or deny other beliefs and opinions. You’re right: a lot of pro-lifers do also support “sexual purity” and oppose gay marriage and have beliefs on a host of other subjects that I personally do not share. Some of these issues relate directly to abortion, some really do not.
The issue here is public relations. Mainstream pro-lifers are preaching to the choir. You can go on about abstinence and gay marriage all you like; it won’t change anyone’s mind about abortion. If we want to see actual change in the way our culture views abortion, pro-lifers need to reach outside of their comfort zone and think about ways that we can talk about abortion WITHOUT talking about religion or coming across as hopelessly antiquated.
“Perhaps the leftist prolifers should work on converting the leftist pro-choicers. That way those inhabiting the same world would be able to ‘communicate’ their meaning better?”
We can and do try, but honestly the right-wingers get in our way. It’s very hard to convince people that pro-lifers really aren’t trying to force their religious (or conservative) beliefs on people when so much of the rhetoric is coming from a religious (or conservative) perspective.
Hi Sarah, I guess why I find it hard to agree with your position is that there isn’t one monolithic group to manage the PR for. Most of us aren’t full time pro-life apologists or advocates, but we do wholeheartedly support the movement … just not exclusively.
I’m still thinking this through, but I am honestly wondering if many use this ad-hominem approach as an excuse not to think about the issue; rather than engaging the arguments at hand they take an easy out. In other words, I maybe the problem isn’t as much to do with those presenting the arguments; maybe it is more indicative of people preferring to keep their heads in the sand on the issue.
If somehow we could magically silence all so-con voices except non-religious pro-life ones, I’m not so sure things would change much, except maybe the excuse for avoiding the issue would change.
It would certainly explain much of what I’ve observed about this debate.
My point is that this ad hominem approach is not a valid argument, and we should not put up with it. Insist that our opponents engage us in reasoned discourse, and insist that they address our rational arguments with rational arguments of their own.
The pro-life position can be established and defended using careful philosophical reasoning and the facts of modern embryology. While religious belief may be an important motivating factor for some people, there is no need to rely on religious belief or religious authority when debating this issue in the public square.
I agree with Dan that religion, or an understanding of humanity based on religious belief may be the motivator for many of the prolife voices, but that should not be a reason to discount those voices. It is hypocrisy to claim that those voices ‘get in the way’. Are voices that promote abortion as acceptable based on individual choice rather than a philosophical good, more valid?
We (if we can be called ‘we’) prolifers need to get past our differences and realize that abortion can be addressed by many voices from many different perspectives. Even the ‘church ladies’ praying their rosaries are not detracting from the ’cause’. They are doing their part, contributing what they are able. The point is to get as many people as possible ‘doing what they can’. Most will not be proffessionals. There are far many more ‘proffessionals’ on the other side. This should be seen as our advantage. Self-sacrifice denotes sincerity and a determined commitment. The many voices, some more conservative, some religious, some not, are an advantage. Only the opposition should see them as a minus.
Brigette,
Yeah, I think I’d be tempted to vote for such a party, so long as they fought abortion in more ways than just criminalizing it.
Jordan: Feel free to stop playing anytime you like, but I’m more curious. What if there was a party that, while being very clear about not wanting to make abortion illegal, wanted to defund it and otherwise simply be a place for pro-lifers to park their votes? Would you still be tempted?
In response to the idea that it’s not appropriate to compare abortion and the Holocaust, please consider this short commentary:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=180963678695#/note.php?note_id=180963678695&id=217971845050&ref=mf
The thing that gets me about the comparisons, though, is that it completely removes the context. For the Holocaust, the Nazis threw people in death camps, starved them, beat them, experimented on them, weren’t there even instances of using their skin to make lampshades? There was a huge level of hatred there, at least from what I’ve seen in all the memoirs. And it was an attempt to wipe out an entire race.
And I can’t carry over that comparison to a pregnant woman choosing to abort a pregnancy. There isn’t a system-wide effort to exterminate all fetuses. And I know that usually the focus goes onto the doctor performing the abortions, but the doctors wouldn’t be do anything at all if the women weren’t the ones choosing.
Nor do I think we can say this comes down to dehumanizing a fetus, and if only it was accepted as equal standing with someone born, we’d be fine. In the US, 60% of abortions were obtained by women who already had at least one child. Can it really be said that they didn’t understand what they were doing?
Brigette,
Yes, I think I probably would. That was kind of what I was thinking when you asked the last question. I wouldn’t expect such a party to win in my riding (much less form government.) But I definitely would use my vote to say, “Hey, I’m pro-life and so are all these people that voted for the party, and maybe more who just didn’t want to vote for a single-issue party.”
Just so long as the party was secular. Though I may have deeply held religious convictions, I understand and appreciate that Canada is a secular state. Which is the major reason why I do not vote for the Christian Heritage Party, despite their non-punititive, pro-life position. Though I have been tempted. (The party leader is actually from my riding.)
Cool! It’s like the political equivalent of fantasy football for me. If I started a political party, I think I’d made it more or less like you describe (not religious though not anti-religious people, not trying to criminalize abortion). Of course it wouldn’t win seats or anything. But it would be a great relief to all sorts of people everywhere who are tired of voting for the marginally less awful party.
Some of the parties in Canada are religious?
Guys, would any of you like to give your 2 cents on a new parental consent law in the US article. I could use some help. Plus there’s a poll.
http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/compassion-in-the-face-of-parental-consent/
Thanks,
Do people from the US join in here as well?
Michelle ☺
Anne: you said it. Plus there’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.
Hi Anne and Rebecca. Did either of you read the link I provided? If so, how do you respond to the legitimate comparison of the Holocaust and other atrocities, such as the Rwandan genocide?
Also, the issue is not whether abortion and the Holocaust are identical because we can all agree they are not. The issue is are there parallels. This other link goes to a pamphlet that explains those parallels and I hope you’ll check it out:
http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/genocide.pdf
Stephanie,
I did read the link, yes. It’s what motivated my comment, especially the issue of context. My understanding of the Rwandan genocide was that it was again motivated by an extreme hatred of one group for another, and sparked an ethnic cleansing.
I don’t think there are parallels between abortion and something such as the Rwandan genocide, for a few reasons. One is that I know of few people — if any — who say “Let’s kill fetuses because they are fetuses” in the same way one would say, “Let’s kill a Jew because s/he is a Jew.” For a true comparison, you’d almost have to have people randomly attacking women in order to get them to miscarry, because they hate fetuses.
Two, if this is genocide, who is the one committing it? I feel we’d end up in a situation saying that women are the ones committing this mass murder, and is that how we really feel? I don’t. As I said before, most place the responsibility on the doctors, but the only reasons why the doctors are doing anything is because the woman has approached the doctor.
Hi Anne. Thanks for your prompt reply and for reading the link; I appreciate that. I do agree with you that there are differences. But do you agree with me that there are similarities?
The nature of a comparison is some things are similar and some are different. But it seems that you’re rejecting any possibility of a similarity because there are differences. If I am misunderstanding you, please let me know. As for the similarities, they were outlined in that chart in the second link.
As for who commits the genocide of abortion, the real question is who doesn’t? Certainly the political and legal system have made abortion what it is today, as have abortion-rights groups who have fought for this, and worked their way into positions of influence to maintain abortion rights. Then there are trained physicians, nurses, etc., along with the woman and her partner who choose abortion, the grandparents who pressure for abortion, and the many who remain silent and indifferent. We all bear responsibility in some way or another.
I’ll leave you with this thought: A couple years ago I was protesting abortion by comparing it (visually) with the Rwandan genocide. A woman walked past. She was from Rwanda. She told me most of her family had been killed by the genocide and she was alive simply because she escaped the country before it began. I became very self-conscious about standing behind my sign and asked her, not knowing what she would say, “What do you think about this message?” She looked at the disturbing graphics side by side in silence for about 20 seconds. Then she pointed to the picture of the aborted baby and /she/ said, “That’s worse, because at least my family could /try/ to run away.”
Stephanie,
I’m not sure if you detected this, but I am pro-choice. I do not believe that a woman should be forced to be pregnant and give birth if she chooses not to.
I don’t agree with the similarities, because I simply don’t see the hatred and intent in the abortion scenario that I do in the others. And because I do not view women who abort in the same manner as slave-owners and Nazis. I don’t think any of us do. Most pro-lifers would insist on treating women who have received an abortion with compassion, and most I don’t think would insist on jail-time. Can you see the same applied to slave-owners or Nazis? Or Sarah Palin when she said she had that fleeting moment after she found out about Trig’s Down Syndrome, and then asked herself if she was going to walk the walk. I cannot think of one instance where if we had someone who said they had a fleeting moment of killing a Jew for ethnic cleansing, or owning a slave, they’d be greeted with the same type of applause. Or if someone said s/he had a fleeting moment of killing their infant or five year old, but then walked the walk, they’d also be praised. I think almost anyone would be horrified at the confession.
I understand, based on the language used, why many would say there are similarities. But then I end up with the language of “Abortion is similar to slavery, or similar to the Holocaust …” and I again get the impression that I’m diminishing what people suffered in the two latter circumstances. In which case, how can I call them similar if I feel that putting abortion in the same group severely lessens the horror of the Holocaust?
**As for who commits the genocide of abortion, the real question is who doesn’t?**
So you think then that women who choose abortion are committing genocide? Because that puts them right up there with those who attempted to commit genocide in any other situation, and I again come down to comparing a woman with a Nazi.
**We all bear responsibility in some way or another.** As a side-note, do you believe this in terms of the Rwanda massacre? Do you believe that everyone bore responsibility for that as well, and thus also committed genocide?
Stephanie Gray has made the point already, but let me (try to) make it again: I really don’t understand those who object to comparing forced abortion with the Holocaust. Sure, there are important differences, but there are differences between any two things compared. Unless they are the same thing–in which case a comparison is worthless–there are going to be differences. What would you expect?
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. In a forced abortion (as opposed to a miscarriage), a mother dehumanizes and disowns her own child. She acquiesces to its murder, which is the premeditated killing of another human being. Such killings are not isolated cases, committed only in some barbaric third-world African countries, but they are happening all over the world, at the rate of tens of millions of a year. The United Nations condones and even supports them. Forced abortion is indeed a holocaust (a wholesale sacrifice or destruction, Fowler’s Concise Oxford Dictionary of 1964).
Those who object to comparing abortion to the Holocaust have really become holocaust deniers. Those who make the comparison are the ones saying, “Never again!”
Anne asked if women who choose abortion are committing genocide. The term GENOCIDE can mean a lot of things, but maybe forced abortion doesn’t completely match up to a strict definition. (I’ve only taken a quick look at the Wikipedia entry.) Regardless, forced abortion is as horrible as the Holocaust. I think that there might be some Nazi war criminals who would be horrified at the present-day abortion holocaust (though there would be some others, no doubt, who engaged in it themselves). Are you aware of the fact that many of the Nazi war criminals had model families? They loved their wife and children dearly. I’m thinking particularly of one Nazi tracked down in Brazil, I think.
What Anne seems to refuse to consider is the possibility that in killing a fellow family member I become as evil as he who kills a fellow countryman. As a Christian, I have had to face the problem of evil within me a long time ago–and still have to face it again every day. We are not inherently good; we are inherently evil.
Anne said, “Most pro-lifers would insist on treating women who have received an abortion with compassion, and most I don’t think would insist on jail-time. Can you see the same applied to slave-owners or Nazis?”
Yes, I can. As there are apparently many victimized woman, caught up in the vicious cycle of “survival of the fittest,” who violate and kill their own offspring after they themselves are violated, so also there were many slave-owners, like Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, who grew up in a system where slavery was acceptable. Such men treated their slaves well, and were actually sympathetic to their emancipation. However, in my opinion, forced abortion is more evil than slavery. (I still don’t think women who have had an abortion should receive jail time. Obviously, abortion isn’t even presently illegal. But even if it were, I would punish the guilty abortionist or pharmacist before, if ever, I would punish the bereaved mother herself.)
What about Nazis? Well, there are the present-day Nazis who want to wipe Israel off the map and who will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. One Jew, Ezra Levant, has said this (http://ezralevant.com/2009/01/nazis-and-palestinians-march-a.html): “other than race, what is the difference between the Nazis and Hamas, when it comes to Jews? Both use Jews as a scapegoat for all the world’s ills; both call for the extermination of the Jews; and both saw the Jews as merely the appetizer before going on to attack other enemies, too.” On January 10, there were hundreds or thousands of people in the anti-Israel rally in Toronto. Ezra Levant called it “massive anti-Semitism amongst Canadian Arabs and the Canadian Left” (http://ezralevant.com/2009/01/whats-a-bigger-problem-than-ga.html)
Slavery still exists in some parts of Africa (e.g. Sudan), usually among the Muslims. The Arabs and Africans have practiced slavery for many centuries. There is also the new kind of slavery of women who travel to other countries for a better life and end up as prostitutes because of the deception of their traffickers. As Brigitte Pellerin noted in a recent blog entry, “Frédéric Mitterand (nephew of former president François)… paid for sex with underage boys. And bragged about it. And now he’s his country’s Culture minister.”
How ironic is Anne’s October 2 “follow-up” on Suricou’s October 2 post. Suricou had said, “Ideally, you need to either side against abstinance-only, or at least stop promoting it. This also goes for other s*xually-related issues. No more talking about the Homos*xual Agenda or the need to defend traditional marriage. No more rants about how the s*xualisation of advertising is corrupting society. No more demanding distributors of pornography go to jail. But these are less important than the s*x-ed.” In other words, Suricou’s advice was to allow s*xual license. Allow s*x whenever, wherever, with whomever.
Then Anne “followed up” and said, “But it would also help if we could see pro-life groups try and eliminate the reasons behind the abortions, and be just as vocal about that as they are about making it illegal.” Anne gave two superficial reasons, but she didn’t probe deep enough. A woman gets an abortion because she is pregnant and doesn’t want to–or thinks she can’t (society’s fault?)–take care of the child. She is pregnant because she had s*x. She had s*x because she wanted to have s*x and society (including Suricou) encourages her to have s*x–whenever, wherever, with whomever.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against s*x. God designed our bodies for s*x, but DESIGN implies a plan and purpose. In the case of people, the plan involved marriage (Genesis 2). Christians thus believe in planned parenthood. So I would urge Suricou and Anne to stop throwing their s*xist religion at me. The abortion debate is indeed fundamentally religious, but despite the current popularity of s*xism, the grand purpose of life is not s*x–and especially not unfruitful s*x.
Jon,
**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.**
And from my perspective, it’s dismissing the camps, the experimentations, the gas chambers, starving them to death, working them to death, the sadism and hatred directed towards the Jews, and saying that pregnant women getting abortions are similar to Nazis. I look at that, and I look at abortion, and cannot conclude that pregnant women are anywhere in that ballpark.
**Regardless, forced abortion is as horrible as the Holocaust. I think that there might be some Nazi war criminals who would be horrified at the present-day abortion holocaust (though there would be some others, no doubt, who engaged in it themselves). Are you aware of the fact that many of the Nazi war criminals had model families?**
Yes. The Nazis also pushed for women to be confined to “hearth and home” and to breed as many Aryan babies as possible, in order for Hitler to have his “super race” and thus viewed as walking baby factories. The horror would’ve been over all losing all those good white babies, and I’m sure they would’ve actively encouraged the “lesser races” to have abortions. And even having model families — people are complex.
**I still don’t think women who have had an abortion should receive jail time. Obviously, abortion isn’t even presently illegal. But even if it were, I would punish the guilty abortionist or pharmacist before, if ever, I would punish the bereaved mother herself.**
Why not? You say I refuse to consider that those who kill a family member become as evil as those who kill a countrymen — and so the inference would be that women getting abortions become as evil as if they killed a countryman. That’s 42 million women making that choice in 2003. If someone who kills a countryman would go to jail, why not a woman receiving an abortion? Especially if abortion is as horrible as the Holocaust and worse than slavery?
The Nazi and slavery issue was meant to look at it today. If we came across someone today owning slaves — regardless of how well the slaves were treated — or committing Nazi-like behavior (killing other races) today, I don’t see us saying that they were misguided or treating them with compassion, the way many pro-lifers say women who have had abortions should be treated. Even though Neo-Nazis might be raised a certain way or those perpetuating slavery are raised a certain way — we still would never say that because they were victimized by their upbringing or something, there shouldn’t be repercussions. Which is also why I brought up the Sarah Palin comparison. Based on the similarities, her admission about that fleeting moment I would expect people to treat with horror, the way I would if someone had a fleeting admission over slavery. Or even if someone had a fleeting admission over their six month old infant.
Jon: Your argument is dependant upon s3x being the cause of pregnancy. That used to be true: It might take a while, but, infertility aside, s3x would eventually lead to reproduction. It isn’t true any more. 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.
This is the first time in history when sexual licence has actually been practical, but we’re still stuck with cultural rules which developed in a time when it wasn’t.
I’m not saying s3x is the purpose of life, as you seem to imply. I’m saying that the reasons for restricting it to a legally-recognised long-term monogamy are now obsolete. So why not go ahead and enjoy?
So yes, I encourage people ‘to have s*x–whenever, wherever, with whomever,’ consenting-adults abiding. But only if they do so properly, with correctly-used contraception. Ideally of multible types. Properly used contaception means no unwanted pregnancy, which in turn means no elective abortions.
(Having discovered s-e-x is the word that triggers the spam filter, I’m joining you in substituting a character. Also, look up the definition of sexist.)
Suricou, you’re talking through your hat again. Ask a doctor – any doctor – whether it’s true that “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” and you’ll be laughed out of the office. There are only three certain ways of eliminating the possibility of offspring. One is complete and irreversible sterilization, one is no sex, and the other is aborting the offspring that got created because contraception failed.
“We are not inherently good; we are inherently evil”.
I believe in what the bible says We are create in the image and likeness of God” And that the spirit of God is within us. Jesus doesn’t just stand for death. He stands for Life -His teachings!Jesus went against many of the beliefs of the New Testament. He saw only the Good in others.Believing this Good truth in ourselves and others will help us to see more good. Unfortunately it is viceversa as well. Its a lot of work to look for the positive as it goes against society
s doom and gloom philosophy- and it just doesn’t work.
☺