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These are the same "economic burden" arguments often offered to justify abortion and the same notions of "uncleanness" imputed to babies conceived in rape and thereby rendered "unwanted." But will killing a baby conceived in rape somehow "unrape" its mother? Will the baby' s death miraculously heal her injury? Will killing this child cause her to forget the horror of her assault? Or will all the guilt and pain and injury of the rape simply be compounded by the guilt and pain and injury of the abortion? If it' s wrong for Jordanians to kill an innocent mother, how can it be right for Americans to kill her equally blameless baby; a baby whose life is being taken for all the same vacuous reasons? Shouldn' t we love them both? The prospective adoptive parents who are desperate to take this child into their family certainly would.

HOMOSEXUAL PERSECUTION AS GENOCIDE

The definition of genocide is also evolving to include new forms of persecution against gays and lesbians. Homosexuals were specially targeted by the Nazis and continue to be victimized by hate violence. But the homosexual advocacy group Act Up (www.actupny.org) now says inadequate appropriations for "AIDS prevention" is genocide. To dramatize the organization' s demands for increased funding of AIDS research, U.S. News and World Report, June, 15, 1998, says the group recently transported the emaciated body of its deceased leader to Washington, D.C. and paraded his open casket (not mere photos) around the White House.

ANIMAL RIGHTS ADVOCATES ARGUE FORM AND FUNCTION

Efforts are also well along to expand the definition of genocide to include even the extermination of animals. The Associated Press reported Sunday, June 27th, 1999, that Harvard University School of Law will join law schools at The University of California, San Francisco and Northwestern University in teaching "animal rights" law. The article contains an interview with Harvard law professor Stephen Wise:

But over the last 50 years, science has shown that some animals -- chimps in particular -- have extraordinary mental capacities beyond what the ancient Greeks, Romans and Hebrews ever imagined, said Wise, whose forthcoming book is called Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals. If they have a human-like intelligence, Wise said, shouldn' t that entitle them to human-type rights? While the concept may sound far-fetched, it wasn' t too long ago that women and blacks were denied rights because they were considered, to some degree, less than human, he said.

Racists compare African Americans with apes to justify the denial of rights to blacks and animal rights activists compare apes with humans to justify the granting of rights to monkeys. These are classic form and function arguments advanced to redefine personhood, the former more exclusively and the latter more inclusively.

THE UNITED NATIONS GENOCIDE TREATY

Following the World War II war crimes trials at Nuremberg, the member states of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, more commonly known as the 1948 Genocide Treaty or "The Genocide Treaty." Article 2, paragraph (d) outlaws "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group." The prohibition arguably condemns as genocide, coerced abortion and is assumed primarily to protect the interests of mothers of wanted unborn children and only secondarily the interests of their unborn children, if at all. We urge that the treaty also be applied to protect unwanted unborn children from the genocide of abortions their mothers "choose." Abortion is no more "chosen" by the baby who is its victim than extermination was chosen by any Jew involved in the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem."

"ANTI-ABORTION" VIOLENCE – INDEFENSIBLE BUT EXAGGERATED

In more than a quarter century of pro-life activism, seven abortion providers have actually lost their lives. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms says that since 1982 there have been 49 bombings and 150 acts of arson at abortion clinics (assuming that each of these property crimes was committed by someone whose motive was opposition to abortion is problematic). Each of the unconscionable killings was tactically stupid and morally indefensible. Each was carried out by a deranged individual acting alone. US Attorney General and arch pro-abort Janet Reno used the vast resources of the Justice Department to impanel a federal grand jury in Alexandria, VA for the purpose of investigating the alleged existence of a nationwide conspiracy of violence against abortion clinics and doctors. According to the March 10, 1996 Kansas City Star, no such conspiracy could be found. And every significant pro-life organization in the country has unambiguously condemned this violence.

Claims of pro-life "violence" are also exaggerated by pro-aborts who, for instance, fraudulently list "picketing" under ridiculous headings like "low-level violence" (see "State of Siege: Antiabortion Violence, 1993-1998" www.villagevoice.com). One is reminded of recent news stories reporting the hysterical claim by the left-wing American Association of University Women (AAUW) that huge numbers of elementary school girls are being sexually harassed by the little boys who are their classmates. Readers who persevered past the lurid headlines and tabloid sensationalism eventually reached the AAUW definition of sexual harassment, which included in essence "being looked at in a way which made me uncomfortable." But then the far left regularly cries wolf!

And the far left can be plenty violent itself. Several of our educational activities involve the public display of large photographs of aborted human embryos and fetuses. Our painful experience has taught us to expect unprovoked violence, or threats thereof, from pro-abortion activists nearly everywhere we exhibit these images. We have been victimized by attacks from passersby who rammed their car into one of our pro-life photo exhibits, nearly running over one of our staff. A pro-abortion newspaper columnist, in print, explicitly encouraged other motorists to do the same at one of our later displays (see above). Our staff has been punched. Objects have been thrown at us. One of our staff recently had a cup of hot coffee thrown directly in his face. Our signs have been attacked with a knife which police had to wrestle away from an assailant. Our signs have been repeatedly knocked down, punched, kicked and hit with all manner of thrown objects and substances. We have been the object of countless death threats from pro-aborts, many publicly shouted or posted on the Web. We are seldom able to display our pictures without the protection of armed police officers and crowd-control barricades.

But compare the real record of anti-abortion violence with the history of social reform discussed in a book by Clark Dougan, A Divided Nation, Boston Publishing (1984) and you get a different perspective. Dougan reports that the US Treasury Department estimates that 5,000 bombings took place across the nation between 1967 and 1970 (New York Times, October 11, 1970, reported that "… another 1,174 attempted bombings were forestalled either because the devices were discovered and disarmed or failed to work”). The majority were related to anti-Vietnam war protests. The Weather Underground, for instance, (a faction of the Revolutionary Youth Movement) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), terrorized the nation with bombings which destroyed the home of a judge, damaged the New York City Police Department and blew up restrooms in the US Senate and Pentagon buildings. A bombing at the University of Wisconsin did $6 million in property damage and claimed the life of an uninvolved graduate student.

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, 5,000 anti-war protestors clashed with 12,000 police, 6,000 National Guardsmen and 7,500 regular Army troops. Authorities responded to wide-spread rock-throwing with tear-gas and savage beatings.

In 1969, 300,000 anti-war demonstrators marched in Washington, D.C. and 500 of those rioted, attacking police and government buildings. Approximately 100 were arrested and an equal number were hospitalized.

In 1970, civil disobedience at Jackson State College in Mississippi was staged to protest the invasion of Cambodia. A battle ensued with police, state patrolmen and the National Guard, in which some 400 shots were fired at a dormitory, killing a student and an uninvolved local youth. Twelve other students were wounded.

Again in 1970, the Ohio National Guard shot 13 Kent State students at an anti-Vietnam War protest. Four of these students died and two of them had not even been involved in the protest. There was also anti-war rioting at Berkeley and Columbia and countless other places.

On the racial front, in 1965, 6 days of rioting in the Watts section of Los Angeles left 34 people dead and over 1,000 injured. There were 4,000 arrests and hundreds of buildings were destroyed.

In 1966, riots in Chicago killed 2 and injured 65. In 1967, Newark riots produced 23 dead and 725 injured. At nearly the same time, 5 days of violence in Detroit killed 43 and injured 324. Federal troops were called in and 7,000 people were arrested with 1,300 buildings destroyed and 2,700 businesses looted. In April of 1968, more Chicago rioting left 9 dead.

In her book Black Resistance/White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America, Berry, The Penguin Press (1994) Mary Frances Berry reports that: "The [Black] Panthers engaged police in more than a dozen firefights from October 1967 to December 1969, and at least 2 policemen and 10 Panthers died in that two-year period."

In 1992, a Simi Valley jury acquitted 4 Los Angles police officers who had used massively excessive force in arresting a black motorist named Rodney King. Rioting erupted in which 38 people were killed and 1,250 were injured. The violence produced 3,600 fires and 3,000 plus arrests. Eventually, 4,000 National Guardsmen were called in to serve with 4,000 regular Army and Marine troops. During the same period, related rioting broke out in San Francisco where 1,400 people were arrested. The National Guard also had to be called up in Las Vegas. There were 80 arrests for rioting in New York City and the National Guard had to put down violence in Atlanta.

And this was only a fraction of the violence produced by the drive for social reform in the 1960s. In fact, The New York Times, September 6, 1970 asserted that: "So accustomed has the nation become to civil disorders that the bulk of these disturbances were not reported in the national press or on television." In light of the extreme violence which characterized the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war campaigns, it is both fortunate and amazing that there has been so much less violence on the "pro-life" side of the abortion battle. The same cannot be said of pro-aborts who have killed 40 million unborn babies just since 1973.

WILL OUTLAWING ABORTION ENDANGER WOMEN?

In The American Journal of Public Health, July, 1960, Mary Calderone, then Medical Director of Planned Parenthood said the following concerning the safety of unlawful abortions:
… 90% of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians …. [A]bortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous, because it is being done well by physicians.

If Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the US, says that the vast majority of unlawful abortions were being performed "well" and by licensed physicians in the 1960s, we can be certain that the vast majority will again be performed by licensed physicians if abortion is outlawed at some future time. The myth of the "back-alley butcher" is little more than a convenient rhetorical devise with which radical feminists seek to induce hysteria in a naïve electorate.

Bernard Nathanson, MD, an abortion expert and an obstetrician-gynecologist who once presided over the largest abortion clinic in the world, said the following in his book Aborting America, Doubleday, 1979:

Nathanson goes on to discuss the advent of chemical abortifacients which many believe will allow women to unlawfully self-abort with a degree of safety at least comparable to current, lawful, physician-performed suction abortion. Time magazine, June 14, 1993 featured a cover story entitled "The Pill That Changes Everything, A new, simpler way to use RU 486 makes abortion a truly personal and private choice …." The article concludes that chemical abortifacients "… could make abortion far more difficult to regulate. And eventually it could mean that abortions will become simpler, safer and more accessible not only throughout the US but also around the world."

The Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2000, featured a story headlined "The Abortion Pill: Finally at Hand? Describing various chemical abortifacient drugs the paper reported the following:

The July 11, 1999 issue of the New York Times Sunday magazine carried an article headlined "The Little White Bombshell." It quoted Eric Schaff at the University of Rochester, who has supervised clinical trials for Mifepristone. The researcher says he is convinced "… the drug is safe and that administering it is a simple procedure that midwives or nurse-practitioners could do." The Journal of the American Medical Women's Association (2000;55: 186-188) contains a commentary by Amy E. Pollack, MD and Rachael Pine, JD entitled "Opening a Door to Safe Abortion: International Perspectives on Medical Abortifacient Use." The abstract states that "In some countries where safe abortion is neither accessible nor legal, even unsupervised, off-protocol use of misoprostol can provide women with a means to safely terminate pregnancy."

The assertion that outlawing convenience abortion will herald a "return to the days of coathangers and perforated uteri" is cynical nonsense. The supposed risk to women is the most dishonest argument yet advanced in opposition to outlawing abortion. When elective abortion is again against the law, pro-lifers will, of course, seek to restrict traffic in illicit abortifacients. But safe, accessible, abortion-inducing chemicals will be as difficult to regulate then as marijuana is today.

CHANGING THE SUBJECT

The pictures of The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) are sometimes condemned for supposedly creating an atmosphere conducive to the commission of anti-abortion violence. This fiction persists despite the widely known fact that GAP' s sponsor, The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), condemns violence against abortion providers -- and against the babies killed by abortion providers.

Dr. Martin Luther King was often castigated by racists who unjustly blamed him for the violent unrest which sometimes followed his peaceful but confrontational demonstrations. Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago argued that if Dr. King would stop exposing racial injustice, black people would be less likely participate in the riots which left many dead and injured (The Civil Rights Movement, Steven Kasher, Abbeville Press, 1996). In his "Letter From The Birmingham Jail," supra, Dr. King rebutted this dishonest attempt to change the subject:

In your statement you asserted that our actions, though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence .... [I]t is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain ... basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence .... Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such a creative tension that a community ... is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that is can no longer be ignored.

In a speech delivered just months before he would be murdered, he restated the imperative of confronting a complacent culture:

... [U]ntil our problem is solved, America may have many, many days, but they will be full of trouble. There will be no rest, there will be no tranquillity in this country until the nation comes to terms with our problem.

Neither will there be tranquillity until the nation comes to terms with the "problem" of abortion.