Catholic moderates and analogies: abortion and contraception?

Returning to the topic of analogies for legalized abortion, Matt Bowman writes:

Catholic "moderates" on abortion reject the analogy between abortion and slavery or the Holocaust(or other massive 20^th century genocides), but they often fail to fully explain why.  By definition, analogies are not exact parallels.  The question is, are the two analogized situations comparable in relevant and important ways? In slavery and the Holocaust, there are three main, relevant comparisons with abortion.  First, dubbing the human-being victims as "non-persons" in legal, societal and linguistic ways.  Second, the massive scale of the victimization in the numbers of victims.  Third, the extreme gravity of the means of victimization: enslavement or killing.  These ways are not peripheral to the experience of either slavery, the Holocaust or abortion.  The similarities are not so tangential that it is unfair to also bring in the intense negative emotions associated with those prior atrocities which are recognized as such.  On the contrary, these three similarities are at the heart of why those things are thought of so horribly. 

Just because some other important components of the abortion situation are different, like the mother's relationship with the child, and her knowledge and culpability, does not render the analogies inappropriate.  For example, it was said below that the analogies are inappropriate because women who abort are not like Nazis.  And I agree with this fact.  But abortionists are like Nazis.  Moderates who think it is OK for abortion to be legal, to that extent think that it is OK to let these literal mass-murderers walk the streets. 

I encourage your readers to familiarize themselves with what current and former abortionists say about their trade, for example in testimonies of their departures from the industry, or in depositions from the partial birth abortion lawsuits, or in transcripts and tapes from National Abortion Federation conferences, or in various other candid statements that you can find from pro-life sources.  They should also read about the terrible things that happen to women in abortion facilities.  Back-alley abortions didn’t stop with Roe v. Wade—they just moved their signs to the front door.

It is fair to ask a Catholic “moderate” not only to address these analogies generally, but to explain specifically whether the three parallels I mention between abortion and slavery or genocide are accurate.  They should stake a public position on whether unborn human beings are persons, and if not why not and what alternate criteria they propose (from their Catholic viewpoint) for determining that a human being may be killed as non-murder because that human being is not a person.  They should explain how the scope of victimization in abortion, which is much larger by the body count, fails to rise to the level of the scope of slavery or various genocides.  And they should explain why the actual practices of abortion—what it is—grinding up babies' bodies or pulling off their arms and legs or injecting them with lethal chemicals, not to mention body parts experimentation, are not parallel to the executions used for example in the Holocaust. The Church's view on these points is crystal clear, including in documents like Evangelium Vitae and from nearly every Bishop in a unanimity unparalleled by any other issue.  Even when Bishops disagree on politicians and communion, they agree on abortion itself.  So, a Catholic "moderate" who explains these specific points might take a position that cannot be plausibly described as either Catholic or moderate.

Interestingly, the article cited below in the NCReporter makes a different analogy:  between abortion and contraception and the Bishops’ response to both.  I think if a moderate thinks some/all unborn children are not persons, or that abortion is not murder, or that abortion need not be legal, then the analogy between abortion and contraception is rather apt.  Of course, to take that position, one would need to deny almost everything the Church teaches on abortion. Several commenters below have gone beyond discussing the analogies themselves to questioning whether pro-lifers have merely rhetorical motives, or whether pro-lifers’ actions are consistent with their views.  In return, it is worth noting that open dissent from Church teaching on birth control has long been acceptable among Catholic intelligentsia, but open dissent from Church teaching on abortion has been marginalized (e.g. Frances Kissling).  This distinction makes sense to me, since the core principles of liberalism itself counsel against abortion (expansion and inclusiveness in who constitutes the human family, opposition to discrimination based on accidental qualities, preferential treatment of the weak and vulnerable, vocal defense of human rights victims, even early feminism which was pro-life). 

But for several reasons, including politics, it now seems that Catholic moderates have been led to a position of dissent from central Church teachings on abortion, and wish to take that viewpoint into the mainstream—to define it as a “moderate,” acceptable or preferable, Catholic position.  This would be a seismic shift in what it means to hold a legitimate Catholic position on abortion.  Even so, some reluctance to stake their position still seems to remain.  But for this reluctance, I wonder whether the moderates would be willing to admit that they actually think abortion is analogous to contraception (rather than claiming that there is no analogy).  If they will be willing to admit it in a few years when the stigma fades away, or if they will be willing to more proudly dissent from those the Church’s core teachings on abortion and the personhood of human beings, I think they should tell us now as they are promoting their position.  The implications are massive.