During the vice presidential debate, Mike Pence accused Kamala Harris of having “attacked” a judicial nominee “because they were a member of the Catholic Knights of Columbus, just because the Knights of Columbus holds pro-life views.” An NBC fact check found this religious-based attack was indeed made by Harris.
In next week’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings, Harris will question Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic, on the basis of her pro-life views on abortion.
Should Harris resort to attacks on faith, she will join, I’m afraid, a long list of other proponents of separation of Christian morality and health policy popularized in an earlier era.
Perhaps the most infamous of these was Dr. Gerhard Wagner, head of the Nazi organization of physicians in the 1930s.
He too complained of Catholic opposition to abortion and other elements of the state’s health programs. He wanted health to be left “primarily in the hands of the approximately 20,000 expert physicians with a reliable worldview.” (Catholics need not apply!)
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Wagner condemned Christian churches for being among “those who reject or oppose us because they hold to another worldview.” He resented that they “warn their sheep in Christian piety … of the errors of the measures taken by the Third Reich.”
Objectors to Nazi Abortions: “Mostly Catholic Physicians”
A report issued on Oct. 25, 1943, singled out Catholic doctors as the main objectors to the new abortion policy being extended from Russia, Poland and the Occupied Eastern Territories of the German homeland.
It was “mostly Catholic physicians,” the report said, who were objecting “that the decree was not in accordance with the moral obligation of a physician to preserve life.”
Do you think abortion is a crime against humanity?
Pro-abortion propaganda had set about “encouraging” abortion of the socially unwanted:
“[T]he press, radio, and movies, as well as pamphlets, booklets, and lectures, must be used to instill … the idea that it is harmful to have several children. We must emphasize the expenses that children cause, the good things that people could have had with the money spent on them. We could also hint at the dangerous effect of child-bearing on a woman’s health…” (Professor Erich Wetzel, April 27, 1942)
Domestic eugenic abortion had been promoted by Wagner as “saving the German people from a steady stream of new moral and economic burdens resulting from genetic illnesses. …We have a good conscience before the world when we eliminate life that is unworthy of life.”
It is against the Democrats’ reincarnation of this attitude to eugenic abortion in the United States today that Judge Amy has already made her stand.
Some Questions on Abortion Inequities
In a recent case related originally to whether the states may, under the Constitution, prevent eugenic abortions, Judge Amy discerned correctly:
“[N]one of the Court’s abortion decisions holds that states are powerless to prevent abortions designed to choose the sex, race, and other attributes of children.”
In her confirmation hearings, Judge Amy could be asked for her views on sex-selective abortion of children who are deemed not to be of the “preferred” sex.
Or her views on entrenched legislative and judicial toleration of disproportionate targeting of black American children for abortion.
Perhaps Judge Amy should be asked about another entrenched injustice being ignored — coerced abortions for women and girls in abusive relationships. Democrat-dominated legislatures and courts have for too long enabled these discriminatory violations of the rule of law to continue with impunity.
Or Judge Amy could be asked why over 67 percent of American children detected prenatally to have Down syndrome are “chosen” for eugenic abortion “treatments.” Or why these children are aborted at a higher proportion (more than 80 percent) than children without Down’s (18 percent), a disproportionality demonstrating a breach of the principle of equality.
Nuremberg: “Protection of the Law Was Denied to Unborn Children”
Regrettably, today’s Democrats don’t want these questions answered. Nor do Democrats want to know of the parallels between the current U.S. abortion record and the Nazi record of systematically decriminalizing abortion.
Instructions issuing directives to decriminalize abortion were furnished at the Nuremberg trials as evidence for the count of crimes against humanity:
“Abortion must not be punishable in the remaining territory … Institutes and persons who make a business of performing abortions should not be prosecuted by the police.”
Not all Eastern women workers’ abortions were forced. In addition, to the charge of “compelling” abortions, there was also the charge of “encouraging” abortions among Polish women by removing abortion from prosecution in Polish courts.
Though abortion had been decriminalized, the Nuremberg court still judged that “protection of the law was denied the unborn children,” and two SS officers, Richard Hildebrandt and Otto Hofmann, were convicted for “compelling and encouraging abortion,” receiving sentences of 25 years.
Nuremberg abortion trials historian Dr. John Hunt has established that condemnation of abortion was not simply limited to forced abortions but included all abortions. American James McHaney, a Nuremberg prosecutor of the RuSHA/Greifelt Case, called abortion an “inhumane act” and an “act of extermination” and stated that even if a woman’s request for abortion was voluntary, abortion was still a crime against humanity.
British Medical Association: “The Greatest Crime Being Co-operation in … Murder, Suicide and Abortion”
In June 1947, the British Medical Association also condemned abortion doctors for lacking “moral and professional conscience.” These doctors had “departed from the traditional medical ethic which maintains the value and sanctity of every individual human being.”
The BMA stressed: “Although there have been many changes in Medicine, the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath cannot change.” The international medical profession was urged to reaffirm “the duty of curing, the greatest crime being co-operation in the destruction of life by murder, suicide and abortion.”
Declaration of Geneva: “Utmost Respect for Human Life from the Time of Conception”
In 1948, the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Geneva included the Physician’s Oath pledging:
“I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception; even under threat, I will not use medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.”
Then, in 1949, the International Code of Medical Ethics declared:
“A doctor must always bear in mind the importance of preserving human life from the time of conception until death.”
Those “Chosen” for Abortion: “Human Beings Rendered Rightless”
Yet sadly, the further we move in time away from Nazi-era atrocities, the easier it seems for our legislatures and courts to slide into a neo-Nazi contempt for the human rights of the child before birth.
Back in 1997, Professor Edmund Pellegrino, heading the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics, warned: “Moral lessons are quickly forgotten. Medical ethics is more fragile than we think. Moral reasoning based on defective premises tends to recur in new settings.”
Part of the opening indictment from doctors’ trials of Dec. 9, 1946, has disturbing applicability to abortion doctors today:
“[F]rom leaders of … scientific medicine, with excellent international reputations, down to the dregs of the … medical profession. All of them have in common a callous lack of consideration and human regard for, and an unprincipled willingness to abuse their power over the poor, unfortunate, defenceless creatures who had been deprived of their rights … All of them violated the Hippocratic commandments … including the fundamental principles never to do harm – ‘primum non nocere’ … they simply relied on their power over human beings rendered rightless.”
In the U.S. since Roe v. Wade, over 62 million American children — tiny human beings rendered rightless — have been culled by abortion.
In years to come, when this pro-abortion madness has passed, Catholic justices like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and hopefully Amy Coney Barrett will be remembered and honored as among the valiant few who tried to protect these smallest human beings “chosen” for cruel extermination in “reproductive health” programs.
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