We are completely appalled that Choose Life McGill continues to defend their comparison of abortion and the Holocaust. Choose Life claims that they attempt to help women by “connecting pregnant, parenting, and post-abortive students with the support they need.” We do not see how comparing women who choose to have abortions to Nazis is in line with this (apparent) goal.
The SSMU councillors quoted in “Choose Life cancels ‘Echoes of the Holocaust’” argued that this comparison trivializes the Holocaust and violates the dignity of women who choose to have an abortion. Yet Choose Life President Natalie Fohl seems to completely ignore these legitimate concerns. On the one hand, she claims that her event does not seek to compare the Holocaust with abortion. But on the other hand, she proceeds to claim that this week’s Choose Life event confronts the issue of whether “the medical profession [dehumanizes abortion] in a similar way to that in which the Nazi regime dehumanized Jews.”
Perhaps we should not be so surprised at the incoherence of Fohl’s defence of the title of this Choose Life event. After all, even the name of her group is Orwellian and misleading; clamouring to rescind women’s reproductive rights isn’t the same as choosing life – it leaves us with no choices at all.
Rachel Gotthilf
Law II, on behalf of Young Jews for Social Justice (a QPIRG McGill working group)