Can you believe people actually compare abortions to the Holocaust and nazis? It’s not a new trend by any means, but it hasn’t seemed to go away, despite the fact that we collectively should know better. Because, in case any explanation is necessary, a woman deciding to get an abortion is completely different than the genocide of a group of people–as if an embryo dependent on a woman for survival should have the same rights as living people purposefully murdered in cold blood (abortion foes love slavery comparisons too, which has the same problem).
It happened again recently. Kansas legislator, Republican state Senator Steve Fitzgerald, made an outrageous comment in a letter comparing Planned Parenthood with a Nazi concentration camp. He told the Kansas City Star that he thinks “the Nazis ought to be incensed by the comparison,” and also said, “This as bad, or worse, as having one’s name associated with Dachau.” Dachau was the first concentration camp created by the Nazis.
Um, what? Seriously?! Why did he say that to begin with? He was told that a donation to the organization had been made in his name–and he was absolutely infuriated–how dare women have the right to choose? The Planned Parenthood chapter then tweeted a photo of the letter, just in case it was too crazy to believe:
Sen. Fitzgerald did NOT appreciate having a donation to @PPGreatPlains made in his honor. Just FYI. https://t.co/raCPC9b3nX #ksleg #heinous pic.twitter.com/D5AbOgRfLM
— PP Great Plains KS (@PPGreatPlainsKS) March 10, 2017
No surprise, Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s President, said the comments were absolutely inappropriate, stating:
“He should be ashamed. It’s this kind of inflammatory language that condones the type of behavior we see sometimes outside of women’s health centers…It’s really disturbing to me that this kind of rhetoric and language is considered acceptable.”
Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, also found Fitzgerald’s comments offensive and harmful, stating, “It’s astonishing to me that an elected official in Kansas could make such a comparison.”
To make matters worse, Fitzgerald also compared donating money to Planned Parenthood to supporting KKK. As if that’s an improvement.
Sadly, Fitzgerald was using the same logic that Personhood USA, an anti-choice group, used back in 2011 during video titled “180” they created, according to Salon. In the video, evangelical pastor Ray Comfort states, “Saying it’s OK to choose is the same thing as saying it’s OK for Hitler to choose.” But other politicians have said just as much, as pointed out by Salon‘s Irin Carmon:
“Mike Huckabee, who supported Personhood USA’s failed efforts in Mississippi, has often compared the Holocaust and abortion, saying of Nazi extermination, “educated scientists, sophisticated and cultured people looked the other way because they thought it didn’t touch them.” The day before Phil Bryant was elected governor of Mississippi — at the same time the state’s voters rejected the Personhood amendment — he evoked the Jews of Nazi Germany “being marched into the oven,” because of “the people who were in charge of the government at that time” as an argument to vote for it.”
Besides the fact that these comparisons are not only a gross logical fallacy that make women taking agency over their bodies into villains, it’s a lazy approach and offensive to the unique tragedy of the Holocaust.
