Abortion, Nazi Germany, and the Culture of Death

Another reader comments:

Let me say first that I agree that the strong language often used by members of the pro-life movement can be counterproductive, misleading, and needlessly hurtful.  A woman who chooses to have an abortion is not even close to the moral equivalent of a Nazi, and anyone who equates the two is at best unthinking, and at worst deeply uncharitable.

On the other hand, I think the way you have framed the issue also falsifies reality in a significant way.  You seem to think of the typical abortion situation as one in which a woman chooses, on her own, to have an abortion because she feels she has “no other choice.”  I happen to be very close friends with several women who have had abortions, and their experience was not like that at all.  Moreover, the experiences of these women, who did not know each other when they had abortions, and are from different backgrounds, were remarkably similar.  Here is the story of one of them, whom I’ll call Rachel (after the Rachel’s Vineyard program for women who have had abortions):   

Rachel grew up in a solid, middle class family with fairly conservative values.  She disapproved of abortion, but was not particularly knowledgeable about it, and often said that although she would never have an abortion herself, she did not want to impose her “own values” on others.  When she turned 17, Rachel was still a virgin – but her friends were all having sex with their boyfriends, and when she started dating someone, she had sex with him.  She wasn’t really comfortable with this decision, as she had always told herself she would wait until marriage.  But everyone around her seemed to expect her to have sex, and she didn’t want to seem abnormal, so she did. 

 When she started to think she might be pregnant, she was a mass of mixed emotions.  She felt shame (although you were “supposed” to have sex, you weren’t “supposed” to get pregnant) and fear.   What would her parents think?  Her friends?  Her boyfriend?  Would she have to leave school?  For the first time, she started to think that she might be capable of having an abortion.  But she also thought about other options.  Could she carry the child to term?  Could she raise the child?  Would she be able to face putting the child up for adoption?  She worked up her courage to go to the doctor, and also tried to develop a resolve to keep the child and do whatever was best for her baby.

 When she went to the doctor, the pregnancy test came back positive.  Before she had time to take this in, the doctor was talking to her about setting up an appointment for an abortion, and strongly implying that this was the “responsible” course for her to take.  She left his office, and went to her boyfriend’s house.  When she told him she was pregnant, his first response was to offer to pay for her abortion.  She told a friend, who advised her to get an abortion “before anyone finds out.”  (Years later, she overheard that same friend say “I may have been a little wild when I was young, but at least I never did anything really bad, like have an abortion.”)  She never told her parents she was pregnant, as she didn’t want them to be ashamed of her. 

 Ultimately, Rachel had an abortion.  After that, she became a strident pro-choice activist for a time, and then for a time she tried to forget the abortion had ever happened.  But years later, she married and got pregnant.  When she saw the beating heart of her daughter on the ultrasound, she was devastated, because she knew that this was a living child, and that she had killed one just like her years before. 

Was Rachel exercising her “autonomy” or “freedom of choice” when she had that abortion?  In a sense, yes.  She did, after all, make the choice to abort the child, and that choice was actualized.  She bears some responsibility for that choice.

But this does not capture the fullness of her experience.  Our choices are determined, in part, by our circumstances and our culture.  Had she truly been given freedom of choice, she would likely have not had sex when she did, much less have an abortion.  Once she got pregnant, every message she received – from her doctor, from her friend, from her boyfriend – was that she should have an abortion.  And of course, the implicit message she received from her parents was that if she was sexually active, they didn’t want to know about it.  This, too, was an encouragement to abort the child.

This is where the comparison to the Holocaust comes in, I think.  It’s a mistake to think that Nazi Germany was a “culture of death,” but that we are somehow simply a “culture of liberty” or “autonomy.”  Abortion is not, in most cases, about autonomous women making rational choices about their own best interest.  Rather, the choices women make are conditioned by their culture.  And what is a “culture of death” but a culture in which the signals all point toward choosing death rather than life?  Where doctors, friends, loved ones all give the message that death is the best choice to make?  It is self-deluding to believe that we do not live in such a culture.  There is a difference between Nazi Germany and post-Roe America, but it is not the difference between black and white, but rather between two fairly dark shades of gray.

As to your second point, that killing a 12 year old is worse than killing a fetus:  Don’t be so quick to assume that everyone would be willing to give up their lives and livelihoods to protect those 12 year olds.  There was no mass uprising in Germany to protest the Holocaust (if I may use that term), and in this country, those who rabidly opposed slavery were generally considered extremists and troublemakers.  There is a great human tendency to avert one’s eyes in the face of horrific evil.  It’s harder to see and identify with a fetus than a 12 year old, and thus easier to avert the eyes, but this is the only true difference between them.