The Roots of Racism and the Fear of Sex in the Pro-life Movement

It is remarkable how uninventive is human malignity.

Renan

One of the most scandalous lies that one group has told about another is that the other group kills, and sometimes eats, children. This accusation, known as "blood libel," has a long, and tenacious history. Usually the motive for this lie has to do with race or nationality, but currently it is directed primarily at the female gender.

THE HISTORY OF BLOOD LIBEL
During the middle ages it was common for Christians to accuse Jews of "ritual murder." Jews celebrated Passover during which they would put the blood of a slaughtered lamb on their doorpost commemorating their escape from Egypt. The Christian notion, deliberately perverted, was that Jews were required to use the blood of Christian children to attain propitiation. Entire villages of Jews were tortured, mutilated and burned when a Christian child turned up dead or missing. And though Popes, and magistrates, pleaded with local populations, and often hid Jews, the killings continued. (1)

Though Jews were murdered by Christians, and their synagogues burned, from the early years of Christianity, the accusation of blood libel began in full force with the death of a 12-year-old boy named William in 1144. And though the accusation continues today the Catholic church finally condemned it in 1934 by ending the worship of Simon of Trent, a young boy murdered in Italy in 1475, and excluding church chants that contained the phrase "the perfidious Jews." (2)

Blood libel is alive and well today. Many groups on the Internet offer "proof" that Jews committed, and still do commit, the ritual murder of Christian children. (3) While most of these groups are connected with the Christian Identity (white supremecist) movement, many are not.

THE MODERN INTERPRETATION OF BLOOD LIBEL
The medical procedure of abortion has been woven into the accusation of blood libel, giving new life to this medieval lie. Pro-life advocates view abortion as women killing, or murdering, children. And it's not just women that murder children, but Jews and Asians as well.

The Catholic Human Life Institute (HLI) of Canada was founded in 1981 by Father Paul Marx. Marx is infamous for his anti-Semitic comments, "Until recently, the real political power in Austria was in the hands of a fanatically pro-abortion Prime Minister, Bruno Kreisky, an atheist of Jewish descent...Although they are supremely sensitive about their own Holocaust, Austria's Jews gave me and my colleagues no help in stopping this new holocaust; on the contrary, they spoke eloquently for killing preborn babies." (4)

Malcolm Ross of The Canadian League of Rights, in his book THE REAL HOLOCAUST: THE ATTACK ON UNBORN CHILDREN AND LIFE ITSELF writes of Jewish Doctor Henry Morgentaler (also a subject of HLI publications),

By the definition of the anti-abortionists, he is the greatest mass murderer in Canadian history. Thousands of tiny little Canadians have been slaughtered by this man. In years gone by, he would have been publicly executed for murder...

(In the meantime, the Canadian Government extradited a former Nazi, now a Canadian Citizen, to Germany for allegedly ordering the execution of several thousand Jews forty years ago.) (5)

These two men and their organizations place "pro-abortion" Jews at the head of family planning groups; as "prominent TV/radio/movie executives, authors, columnists"; and as the "chief exponents of euthanasia." Marx writes, "Jews who are pro-abortion must face up to their role in the greatest holocaust in all history, the abortion holocaust."

THE ASIAN VERSION

The Asian blood libel contains an interesting, if predictable, twist. What is most surprising about this version is that the lie was accepted at face value by so many supposedly respectable, and intelligent people, US Representatives and Senators. The Asian version has the Chinese feasting on aborted fetuses as a culinary delicacy, or engaging in "trendy cannibalism," as one pro-life advocate put it. (6)

Representative Frank Wolf swallowed the lie whole. When he found that it could not be substantiated, he hungrily moved on to other equally sensationalistic issues. (7) But not before he had convinced Senator Jesse Helms of the House Foreign Relations Committee to investigate the reports. The story originally appeared in the now defunct English-language, Hong Kong tabloid, The Eastern Express. The story stated,

She [the doctor] said the "best" were first-born males from young women. "We don't carry out abortions just to eat the foetuses," she said, but added that the foetuses would be "wasted if not eaten". The newspaper said the foetuses were eaten as a soup, together with pork and ginger.

A woman doctor, referred to only as Wang, from the Sin Hua Clinic, Shenzhen, was quoted as saying the foetuses were "even better than placentae" in nutritional value. "They can make your skin smoother, your body stronger and are good for kidneys," she said. (8)

The number of Christian and conservative organizations that reported this libel is surprising. (9) James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, chose to associate the story with the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, villifying both women and the Chinese.(9) The Rutherford institute published "Eating Babies, Is Nothing Sacred?" in the January 1996 issue of their magazine. The article is adorned with a gruesome expressionist style painting of a fetus marching bravely into a gaping mouth, with the umbilical cord generating enigmatically out of the throat. The painting is signed by John Whitehead, the president of The Rutherford Institute. In the same issue Judie Brown, founder of the American Life League was questioned about the efficacy of the story. She replied, "I've read the articles, but I must tell you that contacting pro-life people who work and live in China has brought serious doubt about those stories to my mind. Apparently there is an ongoing investigation by the Chinese government into these reports. And in one of the news reports, two particular clinics are cited and neither of them even exist." Even so, the Rutherford article continues as if the rumor was fully substantiated, with numerous racist snipes at the Chinese.

This is not to suggest that all pro-life organizations are racist. The anti-abortion movement, like Christianity itself, is a perfect garment in which to clothe anti-Semitic, racist and sexist ideologies which have nothing intrinsically to do with either. This is, however, a warning that these groups must address and confront racist and sexist issues among their ranks if they do not want their core values to be misinterpreted.

RACISM IN THE PRO-CHOICE MOVEMENT
At this point I want to acknowledge that the history of birth control is itself steeped in racism. In the early part of this century the issue was dominated by the eugenics movement. Margaret Sanger advocated compulsory sterilization for "morons, mental defectives, epileptics, illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes and dope fiends." (10) Sterilization abuse was practiced on African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and the poor in general. In 1977, the passage of the Hyde Amendment withdrew federal funds for abortion, while poor women were still eligible for free sterilization through government programs.

The argument for legalized abortion is framed differently for white middle-class women, than it is for women of color, and poor women.

When Black and Latina women resort to abortions in such large numbers, the stories they tell are not so much about the desire to be free of their pregnancy, but rather about the miserable social conditions which dissuade them from bringing new lives into the world.

Black women have been aborting themselves since the earliest days of slavery. Many slave women refused to bring children into a world of interminable forced labor, where chains and floggings and sexual abuse for women were the everyday conditions of life. (11)

For Beverly Smith, an African-American woman active in women's health issues, reproductive freedom involves issues of general health, pre-natal and well-baby care, HIV, lesbianism, and religion. But she sums up her arguments by quoting a statement from the Third World Women's Committee on the Abortion Action Coalition, "The right to abortion can be a woman's right to life." (12)

Pro-life advocates argue that women are pressured by men to have abortions that they themselves do not want. They argue that this lets men off the hook and is a way that men oppress women. But if this is wrong, then it is equally wrong for men to force women to carry a pregnancy to term. What women need and want, in either case, is control of their own reproductive processes.

THE "NEW" HOLOCAUST
Blood libel is currently manifested in the strategy of pro-life groups to associate abortion with either the Holocaust, or Slavery and Abolitionism. By manipulating the very strong emotional feelings connected with these issues the pro-life movement attempts to turn Jews, African-Americans, and their allies against women as a group, and in the process trivialize historical realities.

Father Paul Marx writes, "The same segment of the Jewish community that accuses the Pope of insensitivity to the Jewish Holocaust not only condones but has more or less led the greatest holocaust of all time, the war on unborn babies," and, "It is high time that someone remind these pro-abortionists that there is a holocaust going on that dwarves (sic) even the horrible Jewish one, taking 50 million lives every year worldwide." (13)

Malcolm Ross gives the analogy a dizzying twist exposing his thin committment to human rights, "The first 'Holocaust,' with its possible imaginary mass slaughter, has been used to create a false sense of guilt in Christian nations by making them feel that their Christian heritage did nothing, really, to keep them from committing acts of vicious cruelty, and has been called, 'A sneak attack on Christianity.'" (14)

Comparing a woman's right to abortion with the Jewish Holocaust makes every woman a potential Hitler, insane and insatiable, controllable only by legislation and force. Hitler sought Lebensraum, or "living space," for the German people, displacing anyone in his path. Woman-as-Hitler seeks Lebensraum within her own, already occupied body, displacing a being that has not yet come into existence.

Pro-life groups argue that the fetus is a whole, complete human being at the moment of conception. This is a nod to science that teaches us that it takes both the sperm AND the egg to begin the process of creating human life. But it is NOT a far cry from the Hellenic concept of the homunculus. Previous to the discovery of the woman's contribution to generation it was believed that the whole human being existed, in minitaturized form, within the sperm, and was placed within the body of the woman only for gestation.

Both the current, and former, view discount the work of the woman in the development of the fetus into an eventual baby. For nine months the fetus develops through the life of the woman, drawing resources from her body. There is no reason to believe that a soul or spirit pops into existence at any particular moment in time rather than developing over a period of gestation as does the body.

While Hitler wanted to secure the world for the white race, the pro-life movement wants to prevent Woman-as-Hitler from destroying the white race. Malcom Ross writes,

Never has our Race had such a challenge as today. Faced with massive conditioning designed to make you hate your Western Christian Heritage through such movies as "Holocaust" and "Roots," and through textbooks that attempt to portray our ancestors as fools and liars, you must be prepared to break through this wall of fabrications and find the truth.

They [our forbears] succumbed to the Humanists' lies and allowed two World Wars to destroy the flower of our Race. Now through abortion, they are willing to sacrifice the BUDS [Ross's emphasis] of our Race.

They have opened the floodgates of immigration, diluting our blood while slaughtering those of our Race by the millions. In fact, the White Race's proportion of the world's population is steadily declining. (15)

...the white Western world is committing suicide...I guess we have 250,000 Vietnamese here already, and they are going to have large families; the Orientals always do. God knows how many Mexicans cross the border every night... And if we ever have to fight the Russians, I wonder if these people will be willing to stake their lives. (16)

As an analogy, comparing abortion to the Jewish Holocaust fails on several major counts. With Christians and Catholics barely acknowledging their complicity, appeals based on the Holocaust seem disingenuous at best.

BLOOD LIBEL AND WOMEN
It is easy for us to find the accusation of blood libel abhorent and ridiculous when applied so blatently to issues of race, issues to which most of us have been sensitized. Sexism, on the other hand, we approach with some lattitude. While institutionalized, sexism often manifests at the micro level, between individuals, or among small groups. As liberty-loving people we hesitate to involve ourselves in these relationships and let lies stand unchallenged, that we would not tolerate under other circumstance.

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

Pat Robertson, Fundraising letter, 1992 (17)

By calling abortion "murder" the Christian right accuses women of killing their children. A fetus is not a child and an abortion is not murder. Women are not killing, or murdering, children. This is a salacious and wanton lie. It is told to control women, and to create fear around them.

The pro-life position within Christianity sets women up as heretics, or even worse, as witches. It positions Christianity as a male oriented religion antagonistic to women. Eric Holmberg and Jay Rogers, in "The Occult Roots of Abortion," cast women seeking abortions as witches under Satanic control. "Rebellion is called witchcraft,...thus abortion is child sacrifice." Holmberg and Rogers oppose free sexual expression to Christianity equating it with paganism writing, "Whenever pagan sexual immorality is accepted, abortion and child sacrifice becomes a necessity in covering up the fruit of sin." (18)

Without all out spiritual warfare, what are our chances of victory when the demons' lust is being gorged on the blood of not just one, but over one million children each year?

Holmberg and Rogers note that "Abortion is the sacrifice of human preborn infants on the altar of convenience by those with a pagan worldview." [my emphasis] The argument of convenience holds that women have abortions because they can't be bothered to care for a child, that it will interfere with their lifestyles. What this argument ignores is that having a child is a major event in anyone's life. The responsibility never ends. The sacrifice that a woman must make for a child is measureless. To trivialize this by discussing it in terms of "convenience" dishonors motherhood, family, and children.

Jay Rogers calls for public opposition to witchcraft (meaning women taking control of their own lives) through imprecatory prayers, which means asking God to curse, or bring evil to, the subject of the prayer. He also encourages cities to interfere with freedom of association and assemblage, constitutionally protected rights. (19)

THE PRO-LIFE AGENDA
The pro-life movement will not be content to end the legalization of abortion. Their fear of women goes much deeper. Adult Christianity has been on the web since September of 1995 and in that time we have received thousands of responses to our article on abortion. (20) An overriding theme is that if a woman doesn't want to get pregnant, then she shouldn't have sex. The contempt towards women in the sample of responses below is difficult to miss. (These quotes are not corrected for spelling or grammar.)

"If people though about the possabilities of getting pregnant before they decided to fufill their carnal, anamalistic desires, and hop in the sack...many unnecesary abortions could be prevented."

"if you can't go through raising a child, don't screw around with every Tom, Dick, and Harry!!!"

"Sometimes, God will allow a woman to become pregnant to see if she will act responsibly."

"Adults murder their babies for their own pleasure."

"I think that everyone seems to overlook that, your right to choose begins and ends when you have sex!"

"I think that if you are not prepared to raise a child, then you should not be sleeping around."

"If you don't want the responsibility of carrying a child don't put yourself in that position.Keep your legs closed or use a form of birth control."

These responses illustrate the underlying fear of and contempt for women's sexuality. Many in the pro-life movement see pregnancy as a punishment from God for sin. What these people succeed in ignoring is that many women who seek abortions ARE married, and already have children.

Randall Terry of Operation Rescue pulls no punches when it comes to his organization's ultimate goal - a nation of married women bearing countless children.

The dreadful truth is that most of the excuses that women give for having their children killed through abortion are the exact same reasons we give for not having children....In an age of Christianity when we constantly talk about faith, trusting God, God supplying our needs, etc., why can't we simply trust God for how many children we have?...Leave the number of children you have in God's hands. (21)

Steve Wood, the director of St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers spoke at an HLI event, "Adultery always leads to abortion," and "Abortion didn't come on a spaceship from Mars, it is the direct and immediate fruit of the sexual revolution." (22) Wood advocates strengthening the instituation of marriage as a means of strengthening the pro-life position.

And pulling even fewer punches we quote Joe Scheidler, Director, Pro-Life Action League Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1985 "I think contraception is disgusting -- people using each other for pleasure." (23)

It is obvious from these comments that it is the fear of women's sexual expression that most threatens the Christian pro-life movement. It is women's sexuality that must be supressed. And again, not just women. Recently the pro-life movement has expanded to lobby against lesbian and gay rights.

In July of 1998 a coalition of conservative Christian groups including Exodus, The American Family Association, The Christian Coalition, The Family Research Council and others took out a series of full-page ads in major newspapers across the country including the New York and Los Angeles Times proclaiming that "homosexuals can change." The heading of the second paragraph reads, "Calling homosexual behavior sin is not anti-gay, it's pro-life." While some pro-life groups object to mixing these two issues, the key players who financed these ads don't.

It is sex, and the empowerment that sex can bring, not concern for the "unborn," that threatens pro-life Christians.

SUMMARY
The accusation of blood libel has been used throughout history against Jews. The lie is still alive and has found a new home within the Christian pro-life movement. Blood libel has been expanded through perverse imaginings to apply to the foreigners and to women.

If the accusation of blood libel can be used successfully in controlling women it will be much easier to tell other, less outrageous lies to control and exploit homosexuals, immigrants, foreigners and the poor.

If Christians and the pro-life movement want to retain control of their core values then they will need to address these issues honestly and publicly. Reactionary, militant groups such as those mentioned above pose a threat to both pro-life and pro-choice groups.

NOTES:

Special thanks to The People for the American Way for providing documentation for this article. While their views do not necessarily conform to the views expressed in this article, they are a worthwhile organization that I would encourage everyone to use and join.

(1) Cecil Roth, D. Phil., F.R. Hist. S. (editor) THE RITUAL MURDER LIBEL AND THE JEW: THE REPORT BY CARDINAL LORENZO GANGANELLI (Pope Clement XIV.), (The Woburn Press, 1979) p. 22
"We have heard with displeasure from the complaints of the Jews of those countries how for some years past, certain magistrates and other officials, bitter and mortal enemies of the Jews, blinded by hate and envy, or as is more probable by cupidity, pretend, in order to despoil them of their goods, that the Jews kill little children and drink their blood." Pope Paul III, Licet Jedei to the Bishops of Hungary, Bohemia and Poland (1540). [back]

(2) James A. Haught, HOLY HORRORS: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS MURDER AND MADNESS (Prometheus Books 1990) pps. 43-49. [back]

(3) America's Promise Ministries, in "The Torture And Death of Saint Simon of Trent," claims that "hundreds of thousands of children disappear every year in the world, perhaps some of them victims of zionist ritual murder which remain undiscovered."
God's Order Affirmed in Love (GOAL) Their web section, "Jewish Ritual Murder," by Arnold Leese details almost every known instance of blood accusation without, however, including the results - the murders of thousands of Jews in retribuation. The piece ends with the speculation that the Lindberg baby was a Jewish ritual murder.
The Position Of The Jewish Faith On Abortion, from American Life League. They state that, "The most galling irony of all is that the Jews are themselves completing the task that Hitler and all of his legions could not accomplish. It is also excruciatingly true that, for a period of eight centuries (from 1144 to 1945), virtually all of the major persecutions of the Jews were based upon unfounded allegations of ritual child murder. Now, in the United States, Jews enjoy freedom from genocide -- but have led the drive for legalizing the slaughter of preborn children, a uniquely Modernistic form of ritual child murder on a massive scale." [back]

(4) Father Paul Marx, "Pro-Abortion Jews and the New Holocaust," CONFESSIONS OF A PROLIFE MISSIONARY, (HLI) p. 272.
This and other anti-Semitic quotes from Father Paul Marx were taken from Human Life International, The Right-Wing, And The Far Right.
See also "ZPG (Zero Population Growth) Exposes Anti-Semitic Underpinnings of Population Research Institute, Human Life International" [back]

(5) Malcolm Ross, THE REAL HOLOCAUST: THE ATTACK ON UNBORN CHILDREN AND LIFE ITSELF (Stronghold Publishing Company Ltd. 1983) p. 25. [back]

(6) Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, "Time to Lay the Ghost of Fu Manchu to Rest" (Pacific News Service JINN, 03-21-96) [back]

(7) Rep. Frank Wolf's Web Site
Melissa Charbonneau, "Organ Harvesting In Chinese Prisons," (CBN, October 21, 1997)
"Probe Sought on Sale of Prisoners' Organs," (The Salt Lake Tribune, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, WASHINGTON Thursday, October 23, 1997) [back]

(8) Good and Good For You, contains the original story from The Eastern Express. [back]

(9) Mark E. Howerter, Society Has Become A Modern-Day Dr. Frankenstein, 1996 in THE OTHER SIDE.
Bret Hrbek, "Mr. Right's Neighborhood" (Collegiate Times, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, June 27, 1995)
Children of the Rosary, CoR Newsletter, June 1995 [back]

(9a) "The Family Under Fire by the United Nations, An Urgent Message from Dr. James Dobson," August 1995. The article concludes with, "For the benefit of the skeptical, let me assure you that every word in this letter has been carefully documented. Nothing has been exaggerated or overstated." Dobson's source on this is "Unspeakable Delicacy, Cannibalism Makes the Chinese Communist Crime List," by Mindy Belz in World Magazine, May 20/27, 1995. World Magazine claims that it "reports news you won't find anywhere else," and "helps readers think biblically...from a Christian perspective." It has garnered praise from Gary Bauer of the ultra right wing Family Research Council, reactionary radio talk show host Alan Keyes, and convicted felon Charles Colson. [back]

(10) Angela Davis, "Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights," FROM ABORTION TO REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM: TRANSFORMING A MOVEMENT, edited by Marlene Gerber Fried (South End Press, 1990) p.20. [back]

(11) Ibid., p.17. [back]

(12) Beverly Smith, "Choosing Ourselves: Black Women and Abortion," FROM ABORTION TO REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM: TRANSFORMING A MOVEMENT, edited by Marlene Gerber Fried (South End Press, 1990) p.86. [back]

(13) Marx, op. cit., p. 268. [back]

(14) Ross, op.cit., p. 19. [back]

(15) Ibid., p. 37. [back]

(16) Michael Novick, "Women's Rights: Target for Racist Terror," (People Against Racist Terror, 1993) [back]

(17) The Anti-Pat Robertson/Christian Coalition Site [back]

(18) Eric Holmberg and Jay Rogers, "Massacre of Innocence: The Occult Roots of Abortion" [back]

(19) Jay Rogers, "Puritans and Witches" [back]

(20) Adult Christianity, Letters from Readers. [back]

(21) Randall Terry, "Why Do Christians Use Birth Control?" (Advocates for Life Ministries) [back]

(22) Paul Gallagher, "Abortion: The immediate fruit of the Sexual Revolution" (Human Life International) [back]

(23) "You Won't Believe What They Said" (Planned Parenthood of Houston) [back]

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