A Kansas state senator faced criticism from Jewish rabbis this week for describing the aborting of 60 million unborn babies a Holocaust.
The Kansas City Star reports state Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a pro-life Republican from Leavenworth, often brings up the Nazi Holocaust when discussing the abortion issue. He currently is running for a U.S. Congressional district in Kansas.
Recently, the Rabbinical Association of Greater Kansas City complained about Fitzgerald using the comparison, claiming he is using the massive slaughter of Jewish people by the Nazis “for political purposes,” according to the report.
“Senator, your words abuse the memory of the murdered victims of the Nazi regime by using their deaths as a political weapon in our national debate,” the letter said.
“We demand that you cease immediately making these offensive and divisive comparisons to the Holocaust for political purposes, and to find different language to discuss abortion, out of respect for the millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust,” it continued.
Here’s more from the report:
Fitzgerald said during an interview Thursday that he would take the rabbis’ letter “into consideration and under advisement,” and appreciated their sharing their opinion.
He would not commit to stop referencing Nazis and the Holocaust in the abortion debate.
“I don’t think anybody should accept arbitrary limits placed upon the exercise of their freedoms,” he said.
Last year, Fitzgerald compared Planned Parenthood to a Nazi concentration camp after he was told that a donation to the organization had been made in his name.
Fitzgerald once again evoked Nazi Germany on the Senate floor last month when he brought up Josef Mengele, an infamous doctor at Auschwitz, during a debate over an amendment on aborted fetal tissue.
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Abortion, like the Holocaust and slavery, is a human rights abuse that destroys a unique, innocent human being at their most vulnerable stage – in the womb. Like other human rights abuses in the past, abortion discriminates against a specific group of human beings — unborn babies — and treats them as if they are not valuable. Since 1973, about 60 million unborn babies have been killed legally in abortions in the United States. Pro-life advocates fight every single day to remind people that unborn babies are human beings who deserve rights, too.
However, even some pro-lifers caution against comparing human rights abuses to each other. They argue that a comparison may appear to diminish the horror of one abuse or appear to disrespect those grieving from one abuse by bringing up the other.
What ever pro-lifers believe, the essence of the issue is that every human being is valuable and deserves the same rights, no matter what their age, location, skin color, ethnicity or ability.
