by Joyce Arthur

published in The Humanist, July/August, 2000.
Copyright © Joyce Arthur April, 2000
(slightly altered version)

Anti-abortion groups are fond of saying that abortion is a form of genocide, comparable to the Nazi Holocaust and other atrocities. This dubious proposition, offensive to many, outstrips even the more common anti-choice claim that abortion is murder. What is the underlying logic behind this outrageous "abortion as genocide" claim? Do those who make the charge really believe it? And what does it tell us about their view of women?

Let's begin by looking at the tactics of a particular anti-abortion group, the Center for Bio-ethical Reform (CBR) in California, founded in 1990 and headed by attorney Gregg Cunningham. CBR appears to be the leading promoter of the "abortion is genocide" mantra, and has sponsored a high-profile campaign to educate North American young people about this new "truth."

Since 1998, about two dozen university campuses in Canada and the United States have been visited by CBR's controversial Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), a travelling roadshow. The GAP display consists of graphic 6' x 13' color billboards of Holocaust victims, black lynching victims, and other victims of real genocide, juxtaposed with pictures of aborted fetuses. For example, one billboard reads: "The changing face of choice," with the first panel showing the bodies of Holocaust victims, the Nazi swastika, and the caption "Religious Choice." The second panel shows a lynched black man with the caption "Racial Choice," and the third shows an aborted fetus with the caption "Reproductive Choice." One billboard even compares Planned Parenthood to Nazis.

The stated goal of the GAP display is to make people think differently about abortion. But judging by what happens, the unstated goal is apparently to anger, to offend, and to incite violence---then use the publicity to make pro-choicers look bad. Many people find the graphic depiction of historical atrocities to be an extremely offensive way to advance an anti-abortion agenda. Indeed, CBR's own website at www.cbrinfo.org/gap.html features photos of angry, distressed, and traumatized students viewing the display---though CBR insists it's solely the "horror" of abortion that's causing the upset.

The GAP display has also been met with pro-choice counter-protests at almost every campus where it has appeared. On at least five campuses, violence and vandalism have occurred, with students attacking the displays or GAP staff members and volunteers. At Ohio State University, about 30 protesters charged the display in an incident that Associated Press termed a "riot." A female student at Ohio State was arrested after trying to slash a poster with a knife. At the University of Kansas, an African-American student rammed the display with his truck, and a female Jewish student physically assaulted a GAP staffer. Both were arrested. As CBR Executive Director Gregg Cunningham vowed at one campus, "We will make an example out of lawbreakers."

In clear anticipation of such violence, CBR erects barricades to surround the display and shield its staff and volunteers. Incredibly, CBR demands that universities supply these steel fences as well as pay for the extraordinary cost of a campus police squad to stand guard. If the university balks at the expense, CBR threatens to sue, as happened at the University of British Columbia. In fact, CBR often announces its willingness to litigate. Indiana University is currently under just such a threat simply because it is trying to restrict the GAP display to the campus' designated free speech area. And before the group even comes to a university, it sends what some call a "bully letter" to the administration spelling out CBR's constitutional rights. As Cunningham himself stated in the Spring 2000 issue of CBR's newsletter In Perspective, "any university which attempts to interfere with the exercise of CBR's First Amendment rights will be sued."

Once on campus, CBR gathers evidence for potential lawsuits and criminal investigations by routinely videotaping and photographing students at the display, especially pro-choice protesters. They have even been known to take photos or videos of vehicle licence plates. Then, whenever violence or vandalism does occur, CBR is well equipped to sue or press charges. CBR also milks favorable publicity out of any negative incident, condemning universities and pro-choice students for trying to restrict CBR's free speech rights.

Despite CBR's tactics, we still have CBR's basic claim to consider. But is abortion genocide? Most people find this question absurdly offensive on its face. Yet when I surfed the Internet to find pro-choice responses, I found almost nothing. The reason, I suspect, is that most reasonable people can't be bothered to refute something so obviously preposterous---and don't wish to dignify it with a reply. Or perhaps it's because, as Mark Twain said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." In any case, given CBR's activism, I'm convinced that a rebuttal is long overdue.

To start, it must be said that to compare abortion to the real genocide of real people is highly insulting to the relatives and descendants of slaves and Holocaust victims. Genocide is a violent and intolerable act of hatred against a particular community of people. It is an inexcusable crime. Abortion, by contrast, is an essential, legal medical procedure that women desperately need, not only to give them control over their bodies and lives but to preserve and improve the lives of their families. Women have abortions not out of hatred or selfish convenience or because they're coerced into it, but generally because they want to be good mothers to their existing or future children.

However, in CBR's twenty-eight-page pamphlet, Why Abortion is Genocide---available at GAP displays and, in slightly edited form, on the CBR website at www.cbrinfo.org/abortion.html, Cunningham argues that the definition of genocide is broad enough to encompass fetuses and that unwanted fetuses are a dehumanized group comparable to black slaves, interned Jews, and Cambodian Killing Field victims.

But the definition of genocide can only apply to actual people living as part of a human society. It can never refer to unseen fetuses that are not yet legal members of a society, and that don't have---and can never have---undisputed personhood. Clearly, the supposed personhood of a fetus is a matter of subjective opinion which can't be conclusively agreed upon by law, science, or society in general. This is why only born babies should have full human rights under the law, and why we must leave the abortion decision up to the individual woman's conscience.

Paradoxically, Cunningham himself unwittingly draws attention to the subjectivity of fetal personhood when he notes with shock and horror that Peter Singer, author of the book Practical Ethics, advocates the denial of personhood until one month after birth. Perhaps Cunningham, a devout Christian, should have noticed that the god of the Bible seems to hold the same opinion. When Moses conducts a census, God instructs him in Numbers 3:40 to count only those "a month old and upward," implying that those younger aren't true persons. Of course, we could say this is only a subjective opinion, shared by Singer and God, but why should we grant any more credence to the opinion at the opposite extreme---that personhood begins at conception?

Indeed, a major flaw in the argument that abortion is genocide is the shaky premise that fetuses are full human beings with the same status and rights as you and me. This fails to recognize that fetuses are completely dependent on a woman's body to survive and that the fetal mode of growth and survival fits the technical definition of "parasite"---notwithstanding Cunningham's opinion of that word as a dehumanizing slur. It also fails to recognize that pregnant women would be forced to forfeit their own human rights in exchange for fetal rights. In Cunningham's view, fetuses are vulnerable persons being exterminated because they've gotten in the way of selfish "women's liberation" (Cunningham's quotation marks).

This brings to light a second major flaw in the argument---it completely ignores the serious infringement on women's human rights if safe, legal abortion were to be taken away. If anti-abortionists could stop the legal "genocide" of abortion, what would be left? A double "genocide"!---the genocide of countless women undergoing unsafe, illegal abortions, accompanied by only a small decline in actual abortion rates. Most "unwanted babies" would go right on being aborted, and there's nothing that Cunningham or any other anti-abortion advocate could do about it. Abortion is a universal practice, occurring in every society and throughout history, regardless of laws. Therefore, the anti-abortion side's naive opposition to it may be a far stronger indication of misogyny than of a concern for "unborn babies." And abortion being illegal doesn't just kill women, it also negates their moral autonomy, cripples their economic independence, criminalizes them for their biology, and generally turns them into all-around second-class citizens.

On the positive side, Cunningham does briefly reference in his pamphlet the history of women's oppression, including rape, to show that women have been victims of genocide, also. But in the context of abortion, he mentions women only twice---once to call them "victims" of abortion who nevertheless must be deeply "ashamed of their conduct," and once to label them "narcissistic" and "spiteful" for having abortions instead of putting their babies up for adoption. What shocking disrespect and lack of compassion for both women and babies! Why are women who have abortions automatically thought of as shame-filled victims instead of independent moral agents? Why are women's concern and anguish for the children they give up so irrelevant? And since when are babies commodities that women should produce for the consumption of others? In fact, underlying the entire abortion-as-genocide mentality lies a deep-rooted sexism. Cunningham and most other anti-abortion activists seem to be largely unconscious of it, but the following thought experiment should help bring it to light.

For argument's sake, let's say the Genocide Awareness Project is correct in saying that abortion is genocide. This begs the obvious question: who bears the responsibility for this genocide? Who should go on trial for crimes against humanity? The answer depends on how you view the nature and status of women.

Most people in our society believe that women shouldn't be limited by law or tradition to the sole role of bearing and raising children. They believe that women deserve equal opportunity and respect in the public sphere. They believe that women are autonomous beings with the brains and the right to make their own decisions about their lives. If one believes these things, then women bear full responsibility for the abortions they choose to have. If abortion is genocide, then women must be genocidal murderers. That is why many people, including myself, consider the GAP display to be hate propaganda against women.

But do anti-abortionists, in fact, blame women for abortion? Not generally. In spite of all their rhetoric about abortion being murder, they rarely blame the "murderers"---instead they attack doctors and clinics and dump their condemnation at the doors of Planned Parenthood, politicians, judges, evolution, humanism, and our "culture of death."

Partly, this is just practical---women are an impossibly large target---we're half the population. The anti-abortionists can't very well throw tens of millions of women into jail. But should we really let people off the hook for "committing genocide" just because there are too many of them? (We can't cop out by comparing women to the German people during World War II who stood by and did nothing while the Nazis built and ran the death camps. In the case of abortion, it is women themselves who are doing the "dirty deed".)

Does the anti-choice willingness to overlook women's responsibility for abortion stem perhaps from a deep compassion for women? No. Those against legal abortion aren't really interested in helping real women live real lives---their main goal is to outlaw abortion again. And we know all too well the tragic toll of illegal abortion on women's lives, health, and rights. Yet anti-abortionists think that by stopping abortion they will actually be helping women. This apparent contradiction is easily resolved with the realization that anti-abortionists truly believe that women are victims of legal abortion.

Here's where another view about the nature and status of women comes in, a view that seems to be held by most anti-choice people. They believe that women's natural, primary role is to have and raise children. (Many may even believe that women who want something more or different than having a family are deviant). They believe that women are easily victimized by circumstances and easily led by people around them. They believe that women aren't ultimately responsible for their actions because, like children, they need direction and moral guidance. If these beliefs are true, women do not bear responsibility for their abortions. They have been misled into having them by the society and people around them (except for those "deviant" women, of course!). Society itself becomes the genocidal murderer, with abortion providers and pro-choice politicians serving as scapegoats.

Obviously, people who hold such a patronizing and traditional view of women's nature would have difficulty empathizing with the horrible, gut recognition of others that the Genocide Awareness Project is actually hate propaganda against women. Anti-abortion students who invite GAP onto their campuses are a case in point since they don't seem to understand what all the fuss is about. What makes this especially sad is that many of these students are women themselves. I can only conclude that such young women don't really believe in their hearts that women are entitled to, able to, or want to make important decisions about their lives.

This insight into the anti-choice view of women's nature helps explain a strange phenomenon that regularly plagues abortion clinics: anti-abortion women having abortions. Planned Parenthood of America estimates that about 15 percent of abortions are performed on conservative Christian women---many of them anti-choice. I've been collecting stories from abortion providers across North America that describe the antics and rationalizations of anti-abortion women who need abortions. Some clinics actually have a policy of refusing, for liability reasons, to perform abortions on anti-abortion women. This is because these women tend to have great difficulty taking ownership of their abortions, and often place the "blame" on anyone but themselves, usually the doctor or clinic. This can result in repressed emotions that manifest themselves later in the form of lawsuits against the clinic. Sadly, these women have bought into the sexist (and neurotic) notion that they're not personally responsible for their actions.

Here's one example, in a clinic director's own words: "We saw a woman who, after four attempts and many hours of counselling both at the hospital and our clinic, finally, calmly and uneventfully, had her abortion. Four months later, she called me on Christmas Eve to tell me that she was not and never was pro-choice and that we failed to recognize that she was clinically depressed at the time of her abortion. The purpose of her call was to chastise me for not sending her off to the psych unit instead of the procedure room."

Most clinics do perform abortions on anti-abortion women because they feel it's their obligation to help all women. However, much more thorough counselling is provided to ensure that they understand their decision and take responsibility for it. As a result, some anti-abortion women do make peace with their abortions, and a few even become pro-choice, or at least more compassionate towards women who seek abortions. Unfortunately, many others rationalize their decision by convincing themselves that theirs is a unique case---not like those "other" women---even though they have abortions for the same sorts of reasons. Still others demand special treatment: for example, they ask to be let in the back door to avoid being seen by fellow protesters; they reject counseling because no-one could "possibly understand" their situation; and they refuse to sit in the waiting room with those "slutty" women. Finally, some are delighted to have the opportunity to inform clinic staff and doctors that they're a bunch of "murderers," although they usually wait until their abortion is over to say it.

On some level, a few anti-abortion activists do seem to recognize that women are responsible for their abortions. Some ultra-extremists are, in fact, quite willing to throw millions of women into jail, if necessary. Others, notably some anti-abortion counselling agencies, are known to instill tremendous guilt in women for "killing their baby." However, since women's accountability for abortion obviously isn't a major stumbling block for most in the anti-abortion movement, this highlights something else besides their narrow view of women's nature: anti-abortionists don't really believe that abortion is murder, let alone genocide. If they did, surely they would be far angrier at those responsible. Indeed, anti-abortion words often speak louder than actions. Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, even felt forced to spell it out to his followers: "If you believe it's murder, act like it's murder!" A few followed his advice but most never did.

And if the anti-abortionists really believed abortion was genocide, and really believed their own proclamation that doctors are responsible, they wouldn't hero-worship a former abortion doctor like Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Now anti-choice, Dr. Nathanson gets paid to speak at "pro-life" dinner parties about the 70,000 abortions he performed at his New York clinic in the 1970's. But surely genocide is an unforgivable crime, regardless of the perpetrator's remorse and repentance. Would the Nuremberg Trials have let Adolf Eichmann off the hook if he had apologized for engineering the Final Solution?

Clearly, the anti-abortion side is far too quick to forgive and forget. This can only mean their "abortion as genocide" campaign is just cynical public relations. Based on faulty logic, a misogynist view of women, and profound disrespect for real victims of genocide, the Genocide Awareness Project, in my view, is nothing less than an attack against human intellect, dignity, and ethics.