Sherry Colb on Analogizing Abortion to the Holocaust

Dorf on Law: The Limits of Analogies, by Sherry F. Colb:

In my Verdict column for this week, I discuss a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision upholding a German court's injunction against the publication by PETA (the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) - Deutschland (PETA-D) of a series of posters that compare the animal cruelty and slaughter of the animal-based food industry to the Holocaust.  In my column, I take up three questions:  (1) Was the PETA campaign strategically wise?, (2) Does comparing nonhuman animal victims to human victims necessarily insult or degrade the status of the humans?, and (3) Might the offense that people take reflect something less noble than an identification with human victims of the Holocaust?

In this post, I want to offer the hypothesis that comparing victims of distinct harms disserves the victims of both harms.  To analyze this hypothesis, let us consider an analogy that members of the pro-life movement sometimes draw, between the Holocaust and abortion. . . .