Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Rabbis Call On Congressional Candidate To Stop Comparing Abortion To The Holocaust

(JTA) — A group of rabbis is urging a Republican politician from Kansas City to stop comparing abortion to the Holocaust.

The Rabbinical Association of Kansas City wrote a letter to State Sen. Steve Fitzgerald saying his words “abuse the memory of the murdered victims of the Nazi regime,” the Kansas City Star reported Thursday.

Fitzgerald, who is running to be the Republican nominee for a House seat in Kansas’ 2nd District, has compared Planned Parenthood to a Nazi concentration camp and brought up infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in a Kansas senate debate over an amendment involving aborted fetal tissue.

Fitzgerald made the Planned Parenthood comments last year after he was informed someone made a donation to the organization in his name. He compared the logic of a moderate Republican to that of Mengele in a contentious debate last month.

The conservative Republican from Leavenworth said he would take the rabbis’ words “into consideration and under advisement” but would not commit to stop bringing up Holocaust topics during abortion debates.

“I don’t think anybody should accept arbitrary limits placed upon the exercise of their freedoms,” he told the Star.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.