Anti-choice activists have for years equated legal abortion in America to the Holocaust, along with slavery, Jim Crow laws and terrorism. The Holocaust comparison is front and center in the new movie 180, a “documentary” that attempts to change the minds of pro-choice viewers by showing graphic footage from the Holocaust and comparing it to abortion. 180 has been publicized by groups such as Concerned Women for America and Personhood USA, which claimed to have sent the film to 600,000 Mississippi residents just days before the unsuccessful “personhood” referendum.
The producers of 180 say that “between 180,000 and 200,000 copies of the 33-minute DVD were given out at 100 of America's top universities” and that they now want high schools to use the film while teaching students about the Holocaust.
Yesterday, the Anti-Defamation League called 180 “one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years”:
"The film is a perverse attempt to make a case against abortion in America through the cynical abuse of the memory of those killed in the Holocaust," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor. "Not only does the film try to assert a moral equivalency between the Holocaust and abortion, but it also brings Jews and Jewish history into the discussion and then calls on its viewers to repent and accept Jesus as their savior. It is, quite frankly, one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years."
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"The creators of the film clearly don't get it," said Mr. Foxman. "No Christian who understands Jewish suffering should resort to inappropriate comparisons to the Holocaust to send a message that abortion is wrong. This was one of the most painful chapters in human history. Must the memory of the 6 million and millions of other victims be continually misused and abused by those with another agenda?"
In the film, Comfort manipulates the young people interviewed to view the killing of innocent Jews during the Holocaust to be the same as the killing of fetuses. First, he asks the young people whether they would agree to bulldoze innocent Jews into a mass grave and bury them alive it would save their own lives. Then he asks questions about abortion. He tells the young people who answered 'no' to the first question that they have just said that they would not kill innocent Jews, but they think it is okay to kill innocent babies.
Ray Comfort, the creator of 180, hit back at the ADL in a statement today, arguing that the group should be “thanking” him, adding that doctors charging for abortions are just like Nazis profiting off the killing of Jews:
"ADL should be thanking me. Instead they have come out swinging" Comfort said. "My only explanation is that they haven't thought it out before they rushed to judgment. If anyone should stand up for those who have no voice for themselves, it should be the Jews."
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The Los Angeles-based film maker added, "Germany lawfully slaughtered six million Jews. America has lawfully slaughtered nearly ten times that amount. Also, every time Hitler killed a Jewish family he lined his pockets by seizing their assents -- their paintings, jewelry, cars, homes, and bank account. He also seized the gold from their teeth and the hair from their heads, and it amounted to billions of dollars, financing a third of his war-machine with the blood of the Jews." Comfort maintained that the American abortion industry does the same. He said, "Every time a doctor rips the arms, the legs and the head off a baby, he makes quick and easy money. If you want your 16-week baby killed in the womb, it will cost you $765 (current pricing). But if your baby is 19 weeks, it jumps to $2,165, amounting to billions in the pockets of abortion providers. American abortion is not about 'choice,' it's about money... just like the Holocaust. The analogy is legitimate."
