“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana, philosopher and poet.
Much has been made in the pro-life community comparing legalized abortion-on-demand in the United States to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Some leaders in the Jewish community bristle at this comparison and say that we should not minimize what happened in Nazi Germany to the Jewish people by using this comparison.
I agree with them.
I am currently reading The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton. (1) I began reading this book because I was attracted by the sub-title of the book: “Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide.” I wanted to learn more about how, in the United States today, a profession dedicated to helping people and saving lives can blatantly take human life in abortion, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell research.
Dr. Lifton, a Jew, interviewed twenty-nine Nazi medical professionals (28 were doctors), twelve Nazi non-medical professionals (e.g. lawyers, economists, teachers), and eighty survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp who had worked in the medical blocks (over half being doctors) for this book.
The following paragraph struck me as soon as I read it:
“The Nazis based their justification for direct medical killing on the simple concept of ‘life unworthy of life’ (lebensunwertes Leben). While the Nazis did not originate this concept, they carried it to its ultimate biological, racial, and ‘therapeutic’ extreme.” (2)
In his introduction to the book, Dr. Lifton explains a little about the attitude of the Nazi doctors. He states that the whole program of the doctors was “a vision of absolute control over the evolutionary process, over the biological human future.” (3) Dr. Lifton continues by writing:
“Making widespread use of the Darwinian term ‘selection,’ the Nazis sought to take over the functions of nature (natural selection) and God (the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away) in orchestrating their own ‘selections,’ their own version of human evolution.” (4)
In 1920 Alfred Hoche, professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, co-authored a paper entitled “The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life.” This paper is said to reflect “the general German mood following the First World War.” (5) Dr. Lifton summarizes the section written by Hoche as follows:
“Hoche, in his section, insisted that such a policy of killing was compassionate and consistent with medical ethics; he pointed to situations in which doctors were obliged to destroy life (such as killing a live baby at the moment of birth, or interrupting a pregnancy to save the mother). He went on to invoke a concept of ‘mental death’ in various forms of psychiatric disturbance, brain damage, and retardation. He characterized these people as ‘human ballast’ … and ‘empty shells of human being’—terms that were to reverberate in Nazi Germany. Putting such people to death, Hoche wrote, ‘is not to be equated with other types of killing … but [is] an allowable, useful act.’” (6)
Dr. Lifton lists “five identifiable steps by which the Nazis carried out the principle of ‘life unworthy of life.’” (7) His five steps are listed on the next page along with the parallel situation in the United States.
Clearly, comparing abortion-on-demand in the United States to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany is not right. The Holocaust was the final step in a plan created by a society where they thought there were lives not worthy of life. In American society today, where some are claiming there are certain lives not worthy of life, abortion-on-demand is just one step toward the final step.
Did the amniocentesis test show that the child may have Down syndrome? Abort him! Does the embryo contain the genetic sequence for cystic fibrosis? Destroy her! Want to heal a spinal cord injury? Destroy the embryo for his stem cells! Don’t want to care for a person with a disability? Starve her to death! Want a “perfect” baby with no diseases? Alter his genetic makeup!
The Good News is that all human life is worthy of life. This is not because of what we look like, what we can do, or what we may do in the future. All human life is worthy of life because of what God has done with His creative hands. He created, He creates, and He will create all human life (Genesis 1:26-27; Psalm 139:13-16). All human life is worthy of life because of what God has done with His redemptive hands. He redeemed the whole world through His atoning sacrifice on the cross (John 3:16; John 10:10).
Because of what God has done, what He continues to do today, and what He promises to do in the future, we can say that all human life is worthy of life. No matter what age, what stage of development, what condition that life may be in, ALL human life is precious in God’s eyes. And we, as His children, need to protect ALL human life.
The devaluing of human life that took Nazi Germany approximately 15 years to attain is now slowly taking place in the United States of America. The time has come for God’s children to boldly proclaim His Word and to stand for life.
Dr. Lifton’s “Five Identifiable Steps”
Step 1. Coercive sterilization: Those who were to be sterilized included patients suffering from: mental deficiency, schizophrenia, manic depressive insanity, epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea, hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness, grave bodily malformation, and hereditary alcoholism. (8)
Parallel in the United States of America
Early to mid-1900s: forced sterilization was legal in sixteen states. Private individuals and prominent foundations supported the creation of the Eugenics Record Office to promote eugenics in American society. (9) Eugenics is “the study of hereditary improvements of the human race by controlled selective breeding.” (10)
Dr. Lifton’s “Five Identifiable Steps”
Step 2. Killing of “impaired children” in hospitals
Parallel in the United States of America
1973-present: nation-wide legalization of abortion-on-demand for any reason (17 states had legalized abortion for various reasons and at various stages of pregnancy prior to 1973) (11). The use of the amniocentesis test to determine if a child in the womb may have a disability, then offering abortion as an alternative to continuing the pregnancy. The use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis during in vitro fertilization and destroying the embryos that contain a genetic sequence predisposing the child to having a disease (e.g. cystic fibrosis) later in life. (12)
Dr. Lifton’s “Five Identifiable Steps”
Step 3. Killing of “impaired” adults
Parallel in the United States of America
1990-1998: Jack Kervorkian assists over 100 people to kill themselves. (13) 1998: Oregon institutes legalized physician-assisted suicide legislation. From 1998 to 2004, 208 persons with terminal illnesses have killed themselves. Eighty-seven percent cited the fear of losing autonomy as one of their concerns. (14) 2005: The death of Terry Schiavo in Florida is brought about through dehydration and starvation by discontinuing the administration of nutritional substances.
Dr. Lifton’s “Five Identifiable Steps”
Step 4. Killing of “impaired” inmates of concentration and extermination camps
Parallel in the United States of America
2004: New Jersey becomes the first state to legalize (and fund) human cloning experiments. The only reason for having these human cloned embryos is to terminate them in embryonic stem cell research experiments. Experience has shown that cloned animals are “impaired” and it is believed that cloned human beings would be just as impaired: “A review of all the world’s cloned animals suggests that every one of them is genetically and physically defective. Ian Wilmut [lead scientist on the Dolly cloned sheep project] said, ‘There is abundant evidence that cloning can and does go wrong and no justification for believing that this will not happen with humans.’” (15)
Dr. Lifton’s “Five Identifiable Steps”
Step 5. Mass killings
Parallel in the United States of America
Still to come in the United States?
(Footnotes)
(1) Lifton, R. J. The Nazi Doctors – Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide; © 2000, Basic Books, New York, New York; p. 7.
(2) Ibid, p. 21.
(3) Ibid, p. 17.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid, p. 47.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid, p. 21.
(8) Ibid, p. 25.
(9) Quinn, P. “Race Cleansing in America” American Heritage (February/March 2003), pp. 34-43.
(10) The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition; 1994; New York City, New York: Dell Publishing.
(11) “Lessons from before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy; The Alan Guttmacher Institute, March 2003.
(12) Kalb, C. “Brave New Babies” Newsweek; January 26, 2004.
(13) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/hronology.html
(14) “Seventh Annual Report on Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act” Oregon Department of Human Services, Office of Disease Prevention and Epidemiology; March 10, 2005.
(15) “Gene Defects Emerge in All Animal Clones” Sunday Times of London; April 28, 2002.