Today, one of those nastiest of anti-abortion hate groups was on the NC State University campus. One of those extreme groups comparing those who recieve abortions, along with NARAL, to the Nazis, the KKK, and Rwanda's Genocide.
Below the fold is my draft of a letter the the University Newspaper (The Technician). I'd like your review befor I mail it.
Dear Editors:
I was shocked and dismayed about an organization on campus today (4/4/05) calling itself the "Organization for Bio-Ethical Change," a nice Orwellian name for a group who's real agenda is the removal of women's rights. They had a place out on the Brickyard, next to the library, where they erected a square of posters.
These disgusting posters had huge pictures of aborted fetuses on them, often very, very small. This wasn't what was disgusting about them - Indeed anyone who has had a biology class on campus has seen similar or worse. What was disgusting was the comparison of people who request abortions to Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan, and the perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide.
As Rabbi Charles D. Mintz explains (and I agree with him), "the analogy between abortion and the Holocaust inhibits reasonable and civilized discussion on the issue of abortion and thoroughly twists the salient lessons to be learned from the Holocaust so as to force them into an utterly alien context." Indeed, this comparision is not only inaccurate, but actually reverses reality. Regardless of whether you think a fetus is a baby or not, there are vast differences between someone terminating an unwanted pregnancy, especially in its early stages, and murdering millions of their fellow human beings. The most important of them is that a woman, using her own best judgment, and aided by her physician, her clergy person, her family and whomever else she chooses to use as counselors, freely opts to terminate a pregnancy or to carry it to term. Neither church nor state can force her to have an abortion or to mother a child.
Did those Lynched by the KKK, or Murdered in Rwanda or by the Nazis freely choose this? Everyone agrees this is not true. The Jews in the Holocaust were murdered by the power of the state. And the genesis of that mass murder in large measure a function of the willingness of the German people to give up their right to make moral choices in favor of letting the German government make those moral choices for them. The Anti-abortion crowd seems to have more in common with them than the women who actually make that tough moral choice.
Why do we allow such groups onto our campus to spread lies and hate? Aren't we a University dedicated to scientific inquiry? Why was this organization preaching only hate allowed on our busiest public square to speak its lies? Free Speech does not apply to hate speech, and this can only be hate speech. It is inciting, libelous rhetoric like this that leads to people like Eric Rudolph bombing abortion clinics. It leads to people shooting abortion providers. Actions by this group do nothing to further any form of informed debate, and only anger Jews and African-Americans on campus It is time we questioned such actions' efficacy on our campus, and whether we want to be associated with such groups in the future.
