Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

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. . . .

What the Kermit Gosnell Case Reveals About Social Justice and Access to Abortion

Feministe: On second thought about Kermit Gosnell, by Jill:

 He does tell us a few things about abortion. They just aren’t what William Saletan thinks.

The Gosnell case shows us the worst of what happens when abortion isn’t accessible. Gosnell’s “clinic” was nothing short of a house of horrors, and he preyed upon women who couldn’t get abortions anywhere else or who were unfamiliar with the American medical system — poor women, immigrants, minors. . . .