Abortion and Two Historic Parallels
(Some thoughts about Right and Wrong)

Hart Bezner, Ph.D.


It is difficult to evaluate a moral crisis while in the midst of it, torn by diametrically opposed arguments, but once a moral crisis has resolved itself, even if only partially, it is much easier to look back upon it and to comprehend the real issues.  Without the perspective of time differentiating between right and wrong can be elusive.

The abortion debate is evidence that we are in the midst of a moral crisis.  The arguments on both sides are strong and persuasive and many good people are bewildered and unable to judge the moral significance of the debate.

We can profit greatly by looking into the recent past where two similar moral issues erupted and were partially resolved.  We are far enough removed from both to evaluate them much more objectively than the original participants.  I am referring to slavery in the Western World and also to the more recent Nazi era.

The abortion problem, the slavery issue, and the Nazi period are strikingly similar in moral content because all three involve the arbitrary devaluation of human life.  The accompanying moral confusion basically follows the same tragic pattern.

Today, through the wisdom born of hindsight, we feel that slavery was an evil institution. We applaud those who risked much in opposing it, and we find it difficult to comprehend the thinking of those who supported it.

For those who lived during the slavery period the issue was not nearly so simple because it was mired in great moral confusion.  There were many who insisted that slaves were personal property, to be held like other property.  Some claimed that slavery was a Christian institution and that it was a positive good because it gave heathens from Africa the elements of a Christian civilization.  Inconceivably, such statements were accepted by many despite the grossest of injustices.  Paulding, the then US Secretary of the Navy, recalled a discussion with a slave-trader in 1817.  The trader related: "Many is the time I have separated wives from husbands and husbands from wives, and parents from children.  But then I made them amends by marrying them again as soon as I had a chance.  That is to say, I made them call each other man and wife, and sleep together, which is quite enough for Negroes."



ABUSE OF SLAVES

Brandings, whippings, and the splitting of families at sales were common.  Slave women could be violated freely whether married or not.  Those who ran away were hunted down with bloodhounds, wantonly shot and mutilated, and the rape of female slaves was regarded as trespassing on the owner’s property.  No penalties were imposed if the slaves died under punishment, and in some states even the deliberate killing of a slave cost the owner a mere 50 pound fine.

There were great statesmen, philosophers, and churchmen who denounced the evil of slavery, but these were easily outnumbered by those who condoned it.  There were antislavery groups who conducted public meetings to arouse the consciences of men and women, but there was massive confusion in the churches.  A study of the period shows that there was a strong anti-slavery spirit in the churches during the late 1700s, but by 1830 most denominations had become lukewarm and indifferent, and some even tried to justify the evil in their midst.  Outstanding, however, were the Quakers who, once they became conscious of the great injustice, rejected it actively.  They expelled from their fellowship those who failed to free their slaves.

In 1870 the Methodist Church condemned slavery as ‘contrary to the laws of God, man and nature, and hurtful to society’.  Four years later all slaveholders were given 12 months to free their slaves or be expelled from the congregations and John Wesley condemned slavery as the sum of all villainies.  In 1801 the Methodist Church reaffirmed its strong anti-slavery stand, and Conferences were directed to circulate petitions to the governments of various states.  Gradually, however, it was felt that circulating petitions was sufficient and the church spoke less and less loudly against the evil.

The same happened in other denominations, and slavery came to be regarded as a political issue rather than a crucial moral dilemma to which the Church was compelled to address itself.  It was not comprehended that the evil of slavery could not be legislated out of existence without first changing the hearts of the people.  As it turned out, political action ultimately did away with slavery as a system, but the hearts of the slaveholders were not regenerated.  As a consequence, the free Negro is still oppressed in many ways and the violence against him must surely be as evil as slavery itself.

We find great similarities in the abortion issue:  The society has come to accept that unborn humans are somehow inferior and that they may be killed at will, but there is no logical or scientific basis for such presumed inferiority.  There is massive confusion in the society and many are unable to comprehend the morality of the situation.  The organized church, with some notable exceptions, has also demonstrated confusion.  Just as there were churches in the mid 1800s that openly encouraged their governments to maintain the institution of slavery, so we now find denominations that actively pressure governments to extend abortion activities.  We even find clergymen involved in counseling abortion and defending this in public.  Their hollow argument that abortion is the lesser of two evils, or even a loving act, eerily echoes the claim that slavery should be seen as a positive good.

The parallels between abortion and slavery are so remarkable that if we apply the same standards of right and wrong to both, then abortion must be judged as a monstrous evil. There is also a clear warning that the issue cannot be resolved on a political level.  If the hearts of individuals cannot be changed, then surely legislation will not contain the problem either.  Another warning can be derived when we realize that most of the major denominations at one time actively opposed slavery but within a few decades became reconciled to it, encouraged it, and even actively participated in it.  That same moral shift is already painfully evident within many of our denominations in their attitudes toward abortion.



THE NAZI ERA

The Nazi era is recent history, but already it may be viewed as a closed chapter in human history.  It again teaches us about the tendency within the human heart to abuse and to enslave fellow humans.  The process is simple; you merely convince yourself that you are superior and somehow entitled to dominate the lives and happiness of others.  There was a ruthless philosophy at work segregating humans into superior and inferior.  The inferior were again subdivided into useful and useless.  The useless were killed and the useful ones were enslaved by the millions.  This deadly philosophy did not originate with Hitler, although it expressed itself through him.  As early as 1928 we encounter youngsters in public school engrossed in mathematics.  One of the problems mentions that it costs so and so much to support an old and useless woman per year, while it costs so and so much to provide housing for a newly married couple.  How many such housing units could be provided if it were not necessary to keep one million elderly women alive?

The process is subtle, but the old woman loses her status as a human being.  The medical profession cooperated fully with Hitler by becoming his killing machine.  Within a few short years they killed an estimated 278,000 mental patients and other ‘misfits’, and the killing ultimately included problem children and elderly people.  The doctors participated so actively that they were soon willing to participate in the mass killings in the concentration camps, their complicity justified in the name of science.  They wanted to discover, for example, how long a human being could survive in sub-freezing water, and to that end dozens of unwilling victims found themselves strapped down in tanks of ice-cold water.  Their screams could be heard far and wide.  These experiments confirmed what was already well known from the fate of German fliers downed in the North Sea, namely that the human body can survive under such conditions for approximately half an hour.  The doctors were also attempting to discover a more effective blood coagulant.  It had been brought to their attention that many soldiers died on the battlefield due to heavy bleeding after the loss of a limb.  The research involved the selection of inmates from concentration camps and severing limbs from the fully conscious victims.  The researchers observed with stopwatches.

There were a1so cruel experiments involving human steri1ization.  Special desks were developed with strong x-ray sources concealed within them.  Prisoners were asked to sit at these desks to fill out an extensive questionnaire while they received heavy doses of x-rays in the genital area.  The dosages were far too intense and many suffered severe burns.  The ovaries or testicles of the victims were then removed about two weeks later and studied to see how effectively they had been destroyed.  There was no regard for the suffering of the victims just as there was no compassion while Negro slaves were branded, maimed, or castrated.  They were only objects.

It is frequently argued that it is not necessary to paint such grim pictures and that this is an attempt to appeal to the emotions.  I see no reason to conceal the truth.  Let the facts disturb us in all their perverted ugliness to force us to see the truth.

While there is phenomenal similarity between Negro slavery and the Nazi devaluation of human beings, a new and dangerous element entered the scene during the Nazi era in the person of the physician as a mass killer.  It is significant that Hitler did not force any doctors to kill, but they assumed such responsibilities rather wi11ing1y, some with indecent haste.  The role of the medical profession in the atrocities during the Nazi era is well documented, but it is virtually unknown.  It is not taught in medical schools, and it is rarely mentioned in our history classes.  It is so easily forgotten and therefore so easily repeated.  

Returning to the abortion issue, we not only find a certain class of humans devalued and abused, but again we find the medical profession in the forefront of the killings.  Canadian doctors killed approximately 165,000 human beings in the first five years after parliament freed their hand in 1969.  They acted freely and voluntarily, and their actions cannot be defended by sane and moral individuals.  It is true that there are good people among them, motivated by the highest ideals, but as a social group they are the mass killers of our society.  In only five years they learned the art of mass destruction.  What will the future hold for us?  It is chilling to note that in one of the newer, well-known Ontario teaching hospitals nearly 170 abortions were performed before the first live birth was recorded!  And this is where the next generation of physicians is being trained.

To show that the medical profession cannot be forced to kill we only need to recall an event in occupied Holland.  On December 19, 1941, the Reich Commissar of the Netherland Territories issued an order requiring all doctors to report incurably ill patients.  The physicians of Holland rejected this order unanimously.  When the Reich Commissar threatened to withdraw their licenses, they returned their licenses and removed their shingles, but continued to see their patients secretly.  They refused, however, to issue birth or death certificates.  The commissar, Seiss-Inquart, retraced his steps and attempted to gain their cooperation in a more friendly manner, but the Dutch physicians still refused.  He then arrested 100 of the doctors and shipped them off to the concentration camps, but the remaining ones remained more adamant than ever, and quietly provided for the widows and orphans.  Thus it came about that not a single euthanasia nor non-therapeutic sterilization was participated in by any Dutch physician.  They were truly outstanding in not taking even the smallest step to compromise their ethical foundation.  They acted unanimously and they won out in the end.  They should be a model to our own physicians who feel they can’t refuse when requested to kill.  Since the war, however, things have also degenerated badly in the Netherlands and the memory of the heroic Dutch physicians who resisted so valiantly is now dishonored by their successors.

We have already been punished for our inability to discern right from wrong.  Not only have we allowed the most defenseless of our brothers to be killed in large numbers, but we have greatly devalued our own lives.  We have permitted a philosophy to run wild that measures the worth of human lives in terms of money and convenience.  At one time our lives were valued very highly because we were human beings, but today we all have a different worth, some more and others less.  This is the real issue at stake when we consider abortion.  May good people speak boldly against this hideous reappearance of an ancient evil.



This article was originally published in the Catholic Register (Toronto), Nov. 9, 1974
It was subsequently published in the McMaster University Student Newspaper  “The Silhouette”
It is reprinted here with the permission of the author.  The article may be reproduced freely.

Much of the information about the slavery period comes from the researches of
Dwight Lowell Dumond, published in 1961 in his exceptional book “ANTISLAVERY” (The University of Michigan Press.  Library of Congress Catalog Card 61-5937)

Fredric Wertham’s “A SIGN FOR CAIN, AN EXPLORATION OF HUMAN VIOLENCE” is a valuable document recording the medical profession’s involvement in the atrocities of the mid-twentieth century.