Is abortion today as bad as the holocaust of the Jews?

[mdgspencer]

Someone just briefly raised this matter on another thread, so I thought I would create a thread on this issue. Actually, I don’t fully understand one of the common positions on this question, so I simply raise this question because I would like to see people’s reasoning on this matter.

 

[Call_Me_V]

Someone just briefly raised this matter on another thread, so I thought I would create a thread on this issue. Actually, I don’t fully understand one of the common positions on this question, so I simply raise this question because I would like to see people’s reasoning on this matter.

In terms of sheer number of deaths, the statistics I’ve seen would indicate yes, abortion would be far worse. But statistics one finds on the internet aren’t always trustworthy. The numbers make sense to me though. If you’re going by another criteria besides number of deaths, I’d have to know what that criteria was before I could fully respond.

V

 

[hellopeople]

No abortions aren’t as bad as the holocaust. Killing an unborn baby is different than torturing and killing humans that are fully capable of understanding what is going on around them. Just like how killing a living person is worse than killing an unborn baby.

 

[davidv]

Post #3 is a good example of how abortion is worse than the holocaust. In the holocaust their was only a small minority that believed it was a good thing. Today a much larger proportion think it is not wrong.

 

[hellopeople]

Post #3 is a good example of how abortion is worse than the holocaust. In the holocaust their was only a small minority that believed it was a good thing. Today a much larger proportion think it is not wrong.

I didn’t say it wasn’t wrong, I just said that killing an unborn baby is not as bad as killing a person that is alive and out of the womb. I think pretty the majority of governments in the world and probably like 95% or more people would agree with me on that too.

 

[presidentjlh]

Killing an unborn baby is killing a living human being. They are equally wrong.

I don’t think we can really compare the Holocaust and abortion. Both are horrible atrocities. The Holocaust, thankfully, is over, but abortion must be stopped as well.

 

[ljubim]

It’s far WORSE. Not only numbers but because so many people are blind to the truth.

 

[Canto]

No abortions aren’t as bad as the holocaust. Killing an unborn baby is different than torturing and killing humans that are fully capable of understanding what is going on around them. Just like how killing a living person is worse than killing an unborn baby.

Evidence suggest babies can feel pain in an abortion (though some disagree) - cognisance does not make it any less wrong - just as a man inappropriately touching a child isn’t less wrong if the child is not aware of the wrong.

Killing the life with chemicals, tearing the life to shreads with vacume suctioning, snaping the head and arms off or even pulling the brain out - these are the most common forms of abortion.

An unborn baby is living. Life begins at conception with the chromosones all in tact. Within six weeks after which most abortions occur there is a beating heart. It’s pure science!

 

[Hereswith]

The holocaust was done with full, open, self-aware, malicious intent. Nothing compares to that.

Abortion is sad, and ugly. But often the intent is not malicious. It is wrapped up in terror, misunderstanding, self-preservation.

It’s apples and oranges. They both involve a lot of human deaths. That is the only common factor as far as I can see.

 

[Whitacre_Girl]

There are a lot of factors to consider when trying to compare the holocaust to abortion.

Abortion in some ways is worse because it is depriving the most innocent and helpless of everything. They are murdered by their own mothers, and never get a chance to see any of the beauty that God created in the world. This is only further exacerbated by the fact that people are fighting to call this a “human right” to kill one’s own child.

The holocaust is a whole different level of evil. While the numbers of deaths are far fewer, the motivation behind it was a whole different kind of evil. The holocaust was a cold, systematic political slaughter of people based solely on race. It was the complete degredation of a people, and their slaughter. It was intrisically evil both in racism and murder.

I believe that this can really only be boiled down to one conclusion. One simply can not compare abortion to the holocaust. They are two very different things, much like one can’t compare theft and fornication. They are both evil, but in their own way. The only common ground abortion and the holocaust share is the destruction of human life. The motives are very different things.

The only fair thing the holocaust can be used for in the abortion debate is demonstrating numbers. Easily 6x the number of people have been murdered by abortion than jews murdered in the holocaust. I specify jews because there were another 5 million on top of the 6 million jews that were killed because they were other groups of “undesireables.”

 

[HyeDetroit]

Abortion today is as bad as any genocide, ethnic cleansing,or holocaust.
These points can be applied to either abortion or genocide:

#1. The murderers viewed the victims as worthless, less than human, “nobody will care that they’re gone”, a nuisance that must be dealt with.

#2. The murderers try to convince the population that what they did was somehow justified, they distort the truth or flat out deny the murder ever happened.

#3. A large percentage of the population could be aware of what atrocities have been committed, but have apathy towards it.

the unblinking eyes of God will ensure justice prevails in the end.

 

[mjs1987]

The holocaust was done with full, open, self-aware, malicious intent. Nothing compares to that.

Abortion is sad, and ugly. But often the intent is not malicious. It is wrapped up in terror, misunderstanding, self-preservation.

It’s apples and oranges. They both involve a lot of human deaths. That is the only common factor as far as I can see.

There are many things they have in common. For one, both abortion and the holocaust are rooted in the social Darwinian eugenics. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, supported the Nazis and advocated the sterilization of the Untermensch (sub-humans–non Aryans). People forget the Jews were but one group the Nazis sent to the camps. Soviet prisoners had a higher death rate than did Jewish prisoners. The abortion pill RU-486 was developed by a German pharmaceutical corporation that had participated in the holocaust in WWII.

The similarities go further. Germans were told that the Jews and all Untermensch were not really humans. By killing them they eliminated the cause of economic problems and give Germans more living space known as Lebensraum. Today, abortions are 90% of the time for economic reasons and to allow one to live better without the other. Today we justify abortion by saying the babies are just tissue that feel no pain. In both cases, the killings were put behind closed doors and disposed of quietly. The Germans had to have concentration camps because even hardened soldiers in the einsatzgruppen had trouble shooting people in large numbers. They had to develop the camps because the gas was seen as a painless and quick way to kill the undesirables. Heinrich Himmler could not handle witnessing a mass shooting in eastern Europe. This along with the economics of wasting bullets led to the death camps. Today, abortions are done behind closed doors because people could not handle to see it out in the open. We are shielded from the horrors of abortion much in the same way the Nazis tried to shield their people from the mass murder of the untermensch. Abortions are encouraged because they save the government the burden of paying money in welfare to support the new life.

The goal of both is the same in the end. They both want to eliminate unwanted groups in society. The holocaust sought to eliminate groups that were inferior while abortion tries to eliminate the poor and unwanted babies. Is it any wonder why most abortion mills are in poor areas? The less poor, the less poverty is a problem. The best way to stop poverty is to eliminate the poor. This is the same reasoning the Nazis used. They rejected the notion of deporting their unwanted to Madagascar because they wanted the problem eliminated once and for all.

Hitler was against abortions only for Aryans. This is the same as abortion supporter Margaret Sanger’s view on abortion: bad only for wealthy whites.

 

[vera_dicere]

As a few have said, they are different. They are both evil, they are both evidence of man’s inhumanity to man.

However, they can be compared in a social legal sense, in that the Nazis removed the personhood of the Jewish person, they removed their rights, and dehumanised them, they passed laws to make it okay to harm the Jew. In much the same way the govt/society has removed the personhood of the unborn, or refuse to grant it, they dehumanise them and pass laws to make it okay to harm them.

The methodology is the same, the expression of man’s inhumanity to man is the same, the sheer difference in numbers is obvious, as 52 million abortions have taken place in 37 years, where as at least 6 million were killed in about 6 years (of course, people were murdered before the war started).

Apples and oranges. But there are common factors, ie. both fruit.

 

[latin_rite]

I think the mass killing of any humans is as bad as each other. None worse. Both as bad as each other. I can read about all the abortions and feel a great sadness. And i can read about the holocaust. And feel the same amount of saddness. Saying A suffered more than B because of X is just wrong, in my opinion. And takes away the suffering both have felt.

 

[mommamaree]

‘Holocaust’ means ‘burnt’. In the OT, all animal sacrifices were holocaust offerings, because they were burnt with fire.
In many pagan cultures in the time period of the OT, children were offered as holocaust offerings in pagan god-worshipping rituals. (So when Abraham heard his God command him to offer his only son Isaac up in a holocaust offering, there was context for such a request from one’s god, although it was a shock for Abraham to hear his God demand that because his God had already demonstrated His very different nature from the pagan perceptions of godlike behavior.) Then, when the Nazis began exterminating all people of Jewish descent or dissentors, and were burning the bodies, of course the natural association was made with holocaust offerings, and it was very literal.
So, when people make a reference to abortions being a holocaust, they could be referring to the Holocaust of the Jews in Germany in WWII, or they might be referring to its biblical context, that of offering up the baby (through killing it) in a ritual that worships pagan gods. Such an analogy is not that far off if we assume the biblical reference, rather than the historical one of the twentieth century, especially when many procured abortions are performed in the name of Convenience, Lifestyle, Greed, Selfishness…especially if we realize that the modern surgical procedures are being used to accomplish the same end, that of killing one’s child in the name of one’s god.
People in modern society may not recognize these as gods, but they certainly serve and bow down to these ‘ideals’ as if they were modern pagan gods.
Just my two cents…

 

[mommamaree]

There are many things they have in common. For one, both abortion and the holocaust are rooted in the social Darwinian eugenics. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, supported the Nazis and advocated the sterilization of the Untermensch (sub-humans–non Aryans). People forget the Jews were but one group the Nazis sent to the camps. Soviet prisoners had a higher death rate than did Jewish prisoners. The abortion pill RU-486 was developed by a German pharmaceutical corporation that had participated in the holocaust in WWII.

The similarities go further. Germans were told that the Jews and all Untermensch were not really humans. By killing them they eliminated the cause of economic problems and give Germans more living space known as Lebensraum. Today, abortions are 90% of the time for economic reasons and to allow one to live better without the other. Today we justify abortion by saying the babies are just tissue that feel no pain. In both cases, the killings were put behind closed doors and disposed of quietly. The Germans had to have concentration camps because even hardened soldiers in the einsatzgruppen had trouble shooting people in large numbers. They had to develop the camps because the gas was seen as a painless and quick way to kill the undesirables. Heinrich Himmler could not handle witnessing a mass shooting in eastern Europe. This along with the economics of wasting bullets led to the death camps. Today, abortions are done behind closed doors because people could not handle to see it out in the open. We are shielded from the horrors of abortion much in the same way the Nazis tried to shield their people from the mass murder of the untermensch. Abortions are encouraged because they save the government the burden of paying money in welfare to support the new life.

The goal of both is the same in the end. They both want to eliminate unwanted groups in society. The holocaust sought to eliminate groups that were inferior while abortion tries to eliminate the poor and unwanted babies. Is it any wonder why most abortion mills are in poor areas? The less poor, the less poverty is a problem. The best way to stop poverty is to eliminate the poor. This is the same reasoning the Nazis used. They rejected the notion of deporting their unwanted to Madagascar because they wanted the problem eliminated once and for all.

Hitler was against abortions only for Aryans. This is the same as abortion supporter Margaret Sanger’s view on abortion: bad only for wealthy whites.

This is very well thought out. I made the connection between holocaust offerings of children in pagan cultures and surgical killings of fetuses in modern cultures; it seemed an obvious connection to me. But your explanation is an even more direct connection, especially since you made the wonderful point about eugenics and social Darwinism being at the root of both ‘holocausts’, which is absolutely correct. Thank you for taking the time to expose this connection.

 

[Bookcat]

Both are evil and horrible.

*Horrible inhuman acts such as abortion and the holocaust of the Jews

are of a weight that is beyond human capacity to fully measure
*

the horror applied to all those men and women…and children…

so many innocents died in both…just visit Auschwitz and see all the little baby things…all systematically organized…

now the horror is almost silently applied to so many little ones in their mothers wombs…

both are beyond the human ability to fully measure the weight

one person…one little child is a whole universe…

 

[chosen_people]

I would like to thank the posters here for helping to mark yesterday’s Holocaust Rememberance Day with this thread

Here are a few possible starting points for the discussion connecting between the Shoah and abortion:

Catholic animosity to the Weimar republic and the reasons behind it and abortion

The ideas and acceptance of the ideas in the book Katholizismus und vaterland by Father Erhard Schuland and abortion

The vote by the Zentrum party for the Hitler enabling act and abortion

The Reichskonkordat and abortion

The rescinding of the ban for Catholics to join the Nazi party and abortion

The cooperation of the Catholic Church in providing Church records to ascertain the religion of civil servants and abortion

Archbishop Konrad Grober and abortion

Bishop Hilfrich and abortion

Jedwabne Poland July 1941 and abortion

 

[manualman]

What, not Hitler’s Pope as a reference?

In the end, catholics are like all other human beings: good, but fallen. Grace doesn’t overpower free will and pretty much all of us make mistakes (sin) with that free will. The critics all seem to miss that aspect of catholicism and presume that examples of catholic sinners disprove catholicism. Non Sequitor.

I think Whitacre Girl is on the right track. Objectively, abortion is the larger Holocaust with 30million+ victims in the USA alone since RoevWade. Also objectively, both are based on the assertion that the innocent victims are less than human and constitute an undue burden on society that must be eliminated for us “real” people to survive and prosper.

But culpability is not objective. I think there is a real difference between those who have been fooled into believing an unborn child is subhuman compared to those who became convinced that the neighbor they went to school with for 8 years is subhuman! The latter people are far more culpable for their sin than the former. That is what marks the Holocaust as a different league. No matter that they KNEW them, no matter that there was no remote excuse for pretending they were subhuman, they did it anyways.

Objectively, it is ALWAYS murder to kill an innocent human being. Subjectively, it is a lot easier to understand how people rationalize it away when they can’t hear the screams, can’t see the shoes left behind, never see the bodies stacked like cordwood… A whole lotta people lived in an America with chattel slavery once too and never noticed anything askew. If anything, THAT Holocaust is the one to compare with the Jewish Holocaust.

As catholics, we need to judge ourselves and our own decisions objectively. But Mercy requires that we understand reduced culpability in the mistakes of others.

 

[John_of_Woking]

Both extreme evils. One is now universally condemned and remembered with reparations and public grief. The other will hopefully one day be viewed with the same contempt and people will say “what a wicked and perverse generation”. We must contribute with our money and prayers towards eradicating the Culture of Death and that culture starts with a contraceptive mentality.