“Traditional” Holocaust denial is about saying that the Holocaust didn’t happen or downplaying the extent of it. But this is a form of Holocaust denial that downplays the tragedy of it. How?
*It implies that zygotes and fetuses without feelings, brains, memories, lives, or families are equal or greater in value to the lives of the living, breathing, feeling, thinking people that were murdered in the Holocaust. This is an insult to those people, their memories, and their families.
*It’s another form of the “liberal fascism” slur, an attempt to rebrand the fundamentally right wing ideology that was Nazism as just another form of liberalism. This is ahistorical in the extreme, and is a form of denialism. The Nazis actually agreed with the Christian right about gays(well, that they’re perverts, not that they should be killed), abortion, women’s roles, and the centrality of Christianity. Now, obviously they strongly differ on what levels of violence they’re willing to use, and the Christian right in America currently rejects most eliminationist rhetoric. But they’re on board with ”Kinder, Küche, Kirche”.
*Few people, even those that claim abortion is “murder”, will actually commit to the logical conclusion, which is that 35% of American women are murderers. The anti-choice movement currently portrays women who obtain abortions and pea-brained children who make a terrible mistake because they don’t have the intelligence to assume moral culpability, and who will be saved by abortion bans into making the “right” choice that they don’t have the intelligence to make themselves. By equating abortion with the Holocaust, you are extending this lack of responsibility to the people who gassed and shot Holocaust victims.
*And that’s at best. As you can see in the above quotes, people who compare abortion to the Holocaust tend to use very passive language to describe the Holocaust, as if it’s an event that just happened, like a bad weather event. I don’t think they’re letting the Nazis off the hook on purpose exactly. It’s just that when you use language that properly puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of those who murdered their fellow human beings in cold blood, you’re inviting your audience to see why it’s a bad metaphor, even if you believe that abortion kills a person. And that’s because there’s no “cold blood” in abortion. No one gets an abortion or performs an abortion out of some anti-baby bigotry. Most abortion providers and women who get abortion have and love children. Thus, anti-choicers have to conceal and distract from the fact that the Holocaust was fundamentally a hate crime, albeit one on a scale that is impossible to wrap your head around.
*All of the above applies to comparisons between slavery and abortion. These comparisons are an insult to the actual people who suffered under slavery and its aftermath.
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