Fast Forward

Alabama Pro-Life Law Compared Abortion To Holocaust

Life Decision: Pro-life protesters stand with red tape over their mouths in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in anticipation of the Hobby Lobby decision. Image by Getty Images

By Josefin Dolsten April 24, 2019

Image by Getty Images

Update, May 16: The combined bill was passed by the state legislature and signed into law on Wednesday, May 15 by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.

(JTA) — Alabama state lawmakers drew comparisons between the Holocaust and abortion in bills introduced earlier this month.

Sen. Greg Albritton and Rep. Terri Collins, both Republicans, introduced matching bills in the State Senate and House of Representatives to ban abortion except when necessary “to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother.”

Both bills compare abortion to the Holocaust, as well as other genocides and violent acts.

The legislation notes that 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, as well as the number of people killed in Soviet prisons under Joseph Stalin, during China’s “Great Leap Forward” campaign, and in the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides.

“By comparison, more than 50 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973, more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined,” it says, invoking the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade.

The Anti-Defamation League called the comparison “totally out of bounds.”

“It belittles the memory of the six million Jews and millions of others who were murdered at the hands of the Nazis and misappropriates a profoundly tragic historical event for political purposes,” ADL spokesman Jake Hyman said in a statement Tuesday.

The ADL also sent a letter to the Alabama House Health Committee earlier this month asking its chair to oppose the bill “because it contains language that is offensive to the Jewish Community and it infringes on Alabamians’ religious freedom.”

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A message from our CEO & publisher 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.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

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