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Anti-Semitism Evident Among Anti-Abortion Extremists

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has identified a long-running association between anti-abortion extremists and anti-Semitism. The recent shooting of Jewish abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian in upstate New York has caused further speculation on whether abortion providers are targeted solely because of their professions, or whether non-Christian abortion providers are especially vulnerable.

Four of the five abortion providers shot by a sniper in the Upstate New York/Canadian region since 1994 were Jewish. The ADL believes that this is not a coincidence.

“We are deeply concerned about the strain of anti-Semitism running through some extreme factions of the movement,” ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said. “They make insidious claims that Jewish doctors control the practice and industry of abortion, often comparing them to Nazi war criminals.”

Foxman also pointed out the “hideous and offensive” comparisons anti-abortion groups make to the Holocaust on a regular basis. “Whatever one’s position on this heartrending issue, analogizing abortion to the Nazi government’s campaign to murder every Jew in the world diminishes the truth of the Holocaust and implies that ordinary women engaging in a lawful act are Nazis,” said Foxman.

Less than a week after the murder of Dr. Slepian, an anonymous call was made threatening the life of another abortion provider in the Buffalo area. Authorities have reason to believe that the caller also placed a “wanted poster” of Dr. Slepian in a police station washroom prior to the doctor’s death. On the poster, Dr. Slepian’s face had been crossed out with the words “Jew” and “killer” written on the photograph.

ADL strongly believes that Jewish doctors who perform abortions are purposefully singled out by anti-abortion extremists who believe Jews are controlling the abortion “industry.”

One organization that claims Jews are mostly responsible for the existence of abortions in the U.S. is Human Life International (HLI), based in Virginia. HLI founder Father Paul Marx has made anti-Semitic statements dating back to the mid-70’s.

“I do not blame the Jews for the abortion movement. I do say, and will say because it is the truth, that is a strange thing how many leaders in the abortion movement are Jewish,” said Marx circa 1977.

Ten years later, Marx was quoted as saying, “It’s obvious to anyone who’s studied the abortion movement in the Western world as long as I have (25 years) that a large segment of the Jews that is disloyal to the teachings of Judaism more or less leads the abortion movement.”

In 1993, an HLI newsletter contained an article stating: “Today, certain members of this people whose ancient religion and culture managed to survive Auschwitz and Buchenwald are presiding over the greatest Holocaust in the history of the world. American Jews have been leaders in establishing and defending the efficient destruction of more than 30 million pre-born children in this country. . .Why are the victims of one Holocaust perpetrating another?”

A Brookline, Massachusetts clinic administrator stated in 1994 that bomb threats and hate mail were a common occurrence at her workplace. “That was all really routine,” said the administrator. “The hate mail was really graphic, really violent. It usually centered on killing Jew doctors. It said things like, ‘Hitler was right.’ There were really grisly drawings.” Analogies between abortion and the Holocaust are commonly orchestrated by the anti-abortion movement. Groups have done everything from reproducing photographs that depict Jewish corpses alongside doctored aborted fetuses to creating a Web site with the name “The American Holocaust Memorial.”

The anti-abortion Web site Holy War goes so far as to call abortion “the one and only ‘Holocaust’ ever!” and encourages visitors of the site to “Stop the ‘racist Jewish’ abortion industry that cost (sic) the life of 50 million human beings every year!”

Sources:

U.S. Newswire - October 30, 1998

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