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Should We Call Abortion a Holocaust? If The Shoe Fits
LifeNews ^ | 7/9/12 | Matt Barber

Posted on 07/09/2012 12:56:27 PM PDT by rhema

I recently finished reading “Bonhoeffer” by Eric Metaxas. The book, a nearly 600-page biography of German pastor and influential theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was simply life-changing. Throughout his page-turning treatise, Metaxas brilliantly illustrates how Bonhoeffer lived and died by Christ’s admonition, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20).

Although Bonhoeffer penned a number of widely read books on theology and Christian apologetics, he is chiefly remembered for his key role in one of several German conspiracies to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime. For this he was captured and hanged just weeks before the end of World War II.

It seems natural at this point to trek into “must read” book review territory; however, I will resist that temptation. Although “Bonhoeffer” kicked open the door to any number of theological, philosophical and political themes, it struck another cord with me entirely.

As I read of Bonhoeffer’s efforts to thwart the genocidal slaughter of millions of Jews, disabled people and other “enemies of the State,” I could not help but recognize the parallels between the vast holocaust carried out in Nazi Germany just decades ago and the modern-day holocaust ongoing within our own shores.

Whereas the Nazis were responsible for the wholesale murder of more than 6 million Jews, those today who support the practice of abortion homicide are no less complicit in the systematic slaughter of 55-million-and-counting equally precious human beings post Roe v. Wade. The parallels are undeniable and the science unequivocal. Murder is murder whatever stage of development the human victim.

The stark similarities between the two holocausts were lost on neither Dietrich Bonhoeffer nor Eric Metaxas. “Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life,” wrote Bonhoeffer in “Ethics,” his very last book.

“To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder,” he concluded.

Indeed, Psalm 139:13 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

So it occurs to me that those who call themselves “pro-life” and put faith to action in defense of innocent persons – as did Dietrich Bonhoeffer – honor both the memory of this Christian martyr and the God he served. They have picked up his mantle. They are continuing his noble work.

By contrast, if pro-lifers are modern-day Dietrich Bonhoeffers, then what does that make abortion supporters? In the years leading up to and during World War II, many Germans – who were otherwise generally good people – succumbed to Nazi propaganda and acquiesced to the horrific Jewish persecution that escalated from a slow boil to a red-hot torrent around them. In effect, they bought into exactly the same kind of dehumanizing, euphemistic semantical garbage embraced by those who today call themselves “pro-choice.”

Mind-boggling is the human capacity to rationalize genocide.

On Feb. 2, 2012, Eric Metaxas gave the keynote address at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. He was clearly inspired and influenced by the subject of his latest biography.

Sharing the stage and sitting merely feet away was Barack Obama, the most radically pro-abortion president in U.S. history. In a spectacular show of resolve and moxie, Metaxas walked over to the president and handed him a copy of “Bonhoeffer.” He then launched into one of the most powerful and stirring speeches I’ve ever heard.

While President Obama squirmed nervously in his seat, Metaxas addressed both his book and the abortion holocaust with incisive clarity, saying, in part, “We are capable of the same horrible things. … Apart from God we cannot see that they (the unborn) are persons as well. So those of us who know the unborn to be human beings are commanded by God to love those who do not yet see that. We need to know that apart from God we would be on the other side of that divide, fighting for what we believe is right. We cannot demonize our enemies. Today, if you believe abortion is wrong, you must treat those on the other side with the love of Jesus.”

Indeed, we are admonished in Scripture to pray for our enemies – to love those who do evil.

Nonetheless, we are also commanded to speak truth. We are told to hate that which is evil and to fight – indeed to die if necessary – for that which is good.

I will, no doubt, be accused of demonizing abortion supporters by equating abortion genocide to the Nazi Holocaust. I will be charged with violating “Godwin’s law” which holds that: “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

That’s fine.

Still, my comparison is not intended to be an ad hominem attack. In fact, it’s not an attack at all. It simply is what it is. To identify the undeniable juxtaposition between the Nazi and abortion holocausts respectively is to make use of the best analogy available. I can think of no more fitting a comparison. If the shoe fits and all that.

Indeed, ours is a holocaust no less real – no less evil than that perpetrated by the Nazi regime. We’ve simply moved from the gas chambers to the abortion clinic – from Auschwitz to Planned Parenthood.

I love America. She’s the greatest nation on earth. Nonetheless, as long as we continue to allow this enduring slaughter of the most innocent among us, we are no better than was Nazi Germany. Abortion on demand will be viewed by our progeny as the single greatest blight on our American heritage.

To live under Roe v. Wade is to live in shame. To live under pro-abortion leadership is to live under the Fourth Reich.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: abortion; genocide; moralabsolutes; obama; prolife

1 posted on 07/09/2012 12:56:35 PM PDT by rhema
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To: lightman; SmithL; narses; Salvation; wagglebee; MHGinTN; NYer
Abortion on demand will be viewed by our progeny as the single greatest blight on our American heritage.
2 posted on 07/09/2012 1:02:17 PM PDT by rhema ("Break the conventions; keep the commandments." -- G. K. Chesterton)
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To: rhema
Although Bonhoeffer penned a number of widely read books on theology and Christian apologetics, he is chiefly remembered for his key role in one of several German conspiracies to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime. For this he was captured and hanged just weeks before the end of World War II....

....By contrast, if pro-lifers are modern-day Dietrich Bonhoeffers, then what does that make abortion supporters? In the years leading up to and during World War II, many Germans – who were otherwise generally good people – succumbed to Nazi propaganda and acquiesced to the horrific Jewish persecution that escalated from a slow boil to a red-hot torrent around them. In effect, they bought into exactly the same kind of dehumanizing, euphemistic semantical garbage embraced by those who today call themselves “pro-choice.” Mind-boggling is the human capacity to rationalize genocide.

Ping for later

3 posted on 07/09/2012 1:03:26 PM PDT by Alex Murphy (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2898271/posts?page=119#119)
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To: rhema; wagglebee; little jeremiah

4 posted on 07/09/2012 1:03:46 PM PDT by NYer (Without justice, what else is the State but a great band of robbers? - St. Augustine)
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To: rhema

You think Hitler was bad news? If Bonhoeffer & Co had succeeded its quite possible Reinhard Heydrich would have taken Hitler’s place.

Unintended consequences...


5 posted on 07/09/2012 1:15:17 PM PDT by gzzimlich
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To: rhema

Does anyone know what the number is of babies aborted worldwide?


6 posted on 07/09/2012 1:27:20 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!)
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To: rhema
Eight times more innocents have died in the current American Holocaust than the one in the 40’s.

Using the term now, does NOT detract from, nor disrespect the atrocities of the past.
Rather, it emphasizes humanity's capacity for disregard for human life.

7 posted on 07/09/2012 1:42:39 PM PDT by G Larry (I'm under no obligation to be a passive victim!)
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To: rhema

“Nonetheless, as long as we continue to allow this enduring slaughter of the most innocent among us...”

Then we need not be surpised when presented with Obama and his efforts to end the American dream.

For we have abused our Freedoms and proven unworthy of God’s gift.


8 posted on 07/09/2012 1:53:05 PM PDT by G Larry (I'm under no obligation to be a passive victim!)
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To: rhema

Adapted, new tagline


9 posted on 07/09/2012 2:01:42 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (“Destruction of the embryo in the womb violates the right which God has bestowed." ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: gzzimlich

It’s not too likely Heydrich would have taken Hitler’s place after the assassination attempt in 1944 since Heydrich had been killed in Czechoslovakia in 1942.


10 posted on 07/09/2012 2:08:38 PM PDT by Gee Wally
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To: rhema
I've referred to the Fetal Holocaust for years when I've wanted to get people's dander up.
11 posted on 07/09/2012 2:15:33 PM PDT by Tanniker Smith (Rome didn't fall in a day, either.)
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To: rhema
Metaxas has written a wonderful book about a truly great man. The letters between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fiance, Maria, are touching and beautiful. Her letter accepting his marriage proposal and the subsequent letters from him are marvels. To him, her answer “Yes” gave him hope and the will to survive. Read what the word meant to him.
Consider that he was in prison with a good chance of being executed, yet his faith that they would be united one day enabled him write those beautiful passages.
12 posted on 07/09/2012 3:24:35 PM PDT by BatGuano (You don't think I'd go into combat with loose change in my pocket, do ya?)
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To: gzzimlich

Heydrich was all ready dead, assassinated by Czech partisans - but point well taken.


13 posted on 07/09/2012 4:42:50 PM PDT by clive bitterman
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To: Gee Wally

heh.. I thought about checking the dates as I was clicking the post button. Oops!


14 posted on 07/09/2012 4:44:14 PM PDT by gzzimlich
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(1906-1945)

By Elihai Braun


Who stands firm? Only the one for whom the final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these, when in faith and sole allegiance to God he is called to obedient and responsible action: the responsible person, whose life will be nothing but an answer to God's question and call.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer1

Education
Hitler Rises to Power
Resistance
Arrest
Selected Bibliography for Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands out among the Christian leaders during the Nazi era, for he was one of the few to actively resist the racist actions of the Nazi regime. In addition to his legacy of courageous opposition to Nazism, Bonhoeffer's theological writings are still widely read in Christian communities throughout the world.

Education

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the sixth child of Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, born in Breslau, Germany, on February 4, 1906. He completed his studies in Tübingen and Berlin. In 1928, he served as vicar in the German parish in Barcelona; and in 1930, he completed his theological examinations at Union Seminary in New York. During this period, he became active in the ecumenical movement and accumulated international contacts that would later aid his efforts in the resistance.

In 1931, Bonhoeffer took a teaching position with the theological faculty in Berlin. There he produced many of his theological writings, in which he took a traditional viewpoint in Jewish-Christian relations, believing that the Jewish people must ultimately accept Jesus as the Messiah. This theological work greatly increased his prominence in the Christian German community.

Hitler Rises to Power

After years of political instability under the Weimar republic, most Christian institutions were relieved with the ascent of the nationalistic Nazi dictatorship. The German Evangelical Church, the foremost Protestant church in Germany, welcomed Hitler's government in 1933. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, however, although a member of the German Evangelical Church, was not complacent. In his April 1933 essay, The Church and the Jewish Question, he assailed Nazi state persecution.

Bonhoeffer's defense of the Jews, however, was based on Christian supersessionism - the Christian belief that Christianity had superseded Judaism as the new chosen people of God. Despite his outspoken defense of victims of Nazi persecution, Bonhoeffer still maintained, on a religious level, that the "Jewish question" would ultimately be solved through Jewish conversion to Christianity. The Church strongly advocated this view, as did the ecumenical movements most responsible for aiding Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism.

In The Church and the Jewish Question (1933), Bonhoeffer pledged to fight political injustice. The Nazi injustice must not go unquestioned, and the victims of this injustice must not go unaided, regardless of their religion, Bonhoeffer wrote.

With Hitler's ascent, non-Aryans were prohibited from taking parish posts, and when Bonhoeffer was offered such a post in the fall of 1933, he refused it in protest of the racist policy. Disheartened by the German Church's complacency with the Nazi regime, he decided to accept a position at a German-speaking congregation in London.

The opponents of Nazi interference in Church affairs formed the "Confessing Church," and some members, including Bonhoeffer, advocated open resistance against Nazism. The more moderate Protestants made what they saw as necessary compromises to retain their clerical authority despite expanding Nazi control. But under increasing Gestapo scrutiny, the Confessing Church was soon immobilized.

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to teach at Finkenwalde, a Confessing Church seminary, where he continued to train clergy for the Confessing Church. But the official church barred his students from taking its clerical posts. In August 1937, the regime announced the Himmler Decree, which declared the training and examination of Confessing ministry candidates illegal. Finkenwalde was closed in September 1937; some of Bonhoeffer's students were arrested.

Resistance

Bonhoeffer went into hiding for the next two years; he traveled secretly from one eastern German village to another to help his students in their small illegal parishes. In January 1938, he was banned from Berlin, and in September 1940, he was forbidden to speak in public.

In the midst of political turmoil, Bonhoeffer continued to question the proper role of a Christian in Nazi Germany. When German synagogues and Jewish businesses were burned and demolished on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, Bonhoeffer immediately left for Berlin, despite having been banned by the Gestapo, to investigate the destruction. After his return, when his students were discussing the theological significance of Kristallnacht, Bonhoeffer rejected the theory that Kristallnacht had resulted from "the curse which had haunted the Jews since Jesus' death on the cross." Instead, Bonhoeffer called the pogrom an example of the "sheer violence" of Nazism's "godless face."2

The Confessing Church resistance expanded its efforts to help "non-Aryan" refugees leave the country. One member of the resistance movement was the passionate anti-Nazi, Hans von Dohnanyi, a lawyer married to Bonhoeffer's sister. In early 1939, Dohnanyi was transferred from the Justice Department to the Armed Forces High Command Office of Military Intelligence, and used his new post to inform Bonhoeffer that war was imminent. Bonhoeffer, knowing that he would never fight in Hitler's army, left the country in June 1939 for a teaching position at Union Seminary in New York.

But upon arrival in the United States, Bonhoeffer realized that he had been mistaken, that if he did not lead his people during the difficult years of war and turmoil, then he could not partake in the postwar revival of German Christan life. His place, he decided, was in Germany; he returned only a month after his departure, in July 1939. He undertook a more active effort to undermine the regime. With international contacts in the ecumenical movement, he became a crucial leader in the German underground movement.

In October 1940, despite previous Gestapo tracking, Bonhoeffer gained employment as an agent for Hans von Dohnanyi's Office of Military Intelligence, supposedly working for the expansion of Nazism. In reality, he worked for the expansion of the anti-Nazi resistance. During his 1941 and 1942 visits to Italy, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries, he attempted to gain foreign support for the resistance movement.

Arrest

While plans to topple Hitler progressed only slowly, the need to evacuate more Jewish refugees became increasingly urgent. In early 1943, however, the Gestapo, which had traced Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi's large monetary sums intended for Jewish immigrants, foiled plans for a new refugee rescue mission. Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested in April 1943.

Initially, the Gestapo believed that Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were embezzling money for their own interests. Then the truth began to leak out, and Bonhoeffer was subsequently charged with conspiring to rescue Jews, using official travel for other interests, and abusing his intelligence position to keep Confessing Church pastors out of the military. But the extent of Bonhoeffer's resistance activities was not fully realized for months.

In October 1944, Bonhoeffer was moved to the Gestapo prison in Berlin. In February 1945, he was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp, and then to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was hanged on April 9, 1945. Hans von Dohnanyi was executed soonthereafter.

Notes

1 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. "After Ten Years." Letters and Papers from Prison. Enlarged Edition, Eberhard Bethge, ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971, p. 5.
2 W. D. Zimmermann, ed. I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer. New York: Harper and Row, 1966, p. 150.

Selected Bibliography for Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Simon & Schuster.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. "After Ten Years." Letters and Papers from Prison. Enlarged Edition, Eberhard Bethge, ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community. Harper San Francisco, 1978.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Simon & Schuster.


Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

15 posted on 07/09/2012 6:25:34 PM PDT by SJackson (blow in a dogÂ’s face, he gets mad at you, take him on a car ride; he sticks his head out the window)
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To: rhema
Yes!

Life Jewels Life Jewels (Listen)
A collection of One Minute Pro-Life messages. A different message each time you click.

16 posted on 07/09/2012 10:26:31 PM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: rhema
Still, my comparison is not intended to be an ad hominem attack. In fact, it’s not an attack at all. It simply is what it is. To identify the undeniable juxtaposition between the Nazi and abortion holocausts respectively is to make use of the best analogy available. I can think of no more fitting a comparison. If the shoe fits and all that.

Oh, one doesn't need to compare abortion to the holocaust. Stalin and Mao-Tse Tung both killed more people. Vladimir the Impaler didn't kill as many, but the particular cruelty with which he killed his victims would make comparisons to him quite apt, since abortions are extraordinarily cruel and violent. With a little imagination, one can get completely away from that whole Hitler/whatever comparison.

17 posted on 07/10/2012 4:27:58 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: rhema; 185JHP; 230FMJ; AKA Elena; APatientMan; Albion Wilde; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; ...
Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
[ Add keyword moral absolutes to flag FR articles to this ping list ]


18 posted on 07/10/2012 3:40:05 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: rhema

We should make sure to share the blame across the whole godless spectrum. The Nazis as bad as they were became the poster boys for cruelty, but look to the communists in any country. They outdo the Nazis by a factor of ten.


19 posted on 07/10/2012 4:28:56 PM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: wagglebee

>> In effect, they bought into exactly the same kind of dehumanizing, euphemistic semantical garbage embraced by those who today call themselves “pro-choice.”

Essentially, they are Pro-Kill.

Abortion is legal killing of nascent human life — an indisputable fact. The oddly legal “choice” to kill human life is definitively immoral and certainly inhumane.


20 posted on 07/10/2012 5:55:06 PM PDT by Gene Eric (Demoralization is a weapon of the enemy. Don't get it, don't spread it!)
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