Why Comparing Abortion to the Holocaust is Offensive

I don't know why this even needs explaining. But I will, if only to straighten out my own thoughts on it, and because I am baffled that anyone thinks this is ok. 

Abortion & The Holocaust

Abortion is a common, legal medical procedure that in over 90% of cases happens in the first trimester and involves 2 tablets to dislodge a cell growth.

The Holocaust was a violent genocide of over six billion living humans. It included forced labour, imprisonment, starvation, torture and murder. It also included sexual violence and inflicting forcible sterilisation and abortion on unwilling women. 

The Nazis Removed Bodily Autonomy

The Nazis banned abortions for Aryan women (making it a capital offence) and subjected women they disapproved of to forced sterilisations and abortion.

The thing that disturbs me most about pro-life rebuttals to this argument is that they don't see that forcing a woman to have a baby she does not want and forcing a woman to have an abortion are equally bad. 

Many women during the Holocaust lacked bodily autonomy. They were subject to sexual violence, medical abuses, forced sterilisation, forced abortion (note the forced bit). Pregnancy for a woman in the ghettos or camps meant death. 

Abortion Saved Lives During the Holocaust

Pregnancy in the ghettos or the camps meant selection and death. It was a truism during the war. It is referenced in Schindler's Ark, where they touch upon Schindler's purchase of 'gynaecological instruments' to save the life of one of his women workers.

A more historic and heroic example of this hideous situation is Gisella Perl. I do not believe human life begins at conception, but Perl did. Nevertheless, she performed thousands of abortions on women - because she knew the alternative was definitely death for mother and child, possibly preceded by cruel medical experimentation. 

There are some very strange people who see Perl as a butcher. 

This is a woman who violated her own personal beliefs in order to save literally thousands of lives. It would have been easier and safer for her to let those women go to vivisection and death. She would have been murdered had she been caught. But instead, she made the hard choice and risked her life to save theirs. 

Most importantly...

The Jewish Faith is Explicitly Pro Choice

The Jewish position is that the mother's life always takes precedence over that of the foetus. Abortion is also acceptable where the pregnancy is causing physical or mental distress. Unsurprisingly, Conservative Judaism is stricter than Reform Judaism, a movement which is explicitly pro-choice. 

Co-opting the genocide of a group of people who explicitly disagree with your beliefs in order to promote your beliefs is pretty unpleasant. 

So?

I am not saying that pro-lifers are Nazis for being anti-abortion, any more than I am saying that pet owners are Nazis because Hitler owned a dog. 

I am saying that the Nazis sought to restrict bodily autonomy for all women, in several different ways. 

I am saying that that was an explicit technique of the Holocaust. 

I am saying that comparing the right to abortion to a genocide that specifically sought to take bodily autonomy and choice away from women is ludicrous.