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ST. ANDREWS Scotland, September 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Abortion campaigners in Britain are furious over comments made by a Scottish Catholic bishop comparing legal, state-sponsored abortion to the Nazi Holocaust. But pro-life campaigners who use graphic images, some of which make the same comparison, have said the comparison is both philosophically and historically apt and that abortionists and their defenders should think hard about their position.

Speaking about the decision given last week by a Brighton court that displaying graphic images to protest abortion is not an offence under the Public Order Act, Bishop Joseph Devine of the Motherwell diocese had said: “All who value freedom of speech and expression will welcome the dismissal of this case by the courts.”

“I have no doubt that the publication of the photographs of the victims of Auschwitz and the Burma Railway brought home the horrors of such evil catastrophes far more effectively than a million pleading words. 200,000 abortions take place in Britain each year,” Bishop Devine continued.

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“Why is the pro-choice lobby so desperate to hide the truth about abortion from the public?”

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, still stinging from the court decision exonerating Abort 67 and the use of graphic images, reacted with fury, calling the comments “very warped.”

“It is staggering that those who invoke morality are comfortable with waving large banners of dismembered foetuses” said Clare Murphy, BPAS Director of External Affairs.

However, Andrew Stephenson, the founder of Abort 67 and the man against whom the charges were laid at the behest of BPAS, told LifeSiteNews.com that the bishop’s comment is spot on.

“Is it wrong to compare abortion with the Holocaust? No one argues that abortion is the same as the Holocaust but to deny they are comparable shows an ignorance of history and the reality of abortion,” Stephenson said.

Ann Furedi chief executive of BPAS has said, “We can accept that the embryo is a living thing in the fact that it has a beating heart, that it has its own genetic system within it, it’s clearly human in the sense that it’s not a gerbil and we can recognise that it is human life….but the point is not when does life begin but when does it begin to matter.”

Stephenson said that the question ought to be, “Matters to whom?”

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“Consider the vocabulary of the Third Reich when dehumanising Jews by calling them ‘Life, unworthy of life’ or ‘parasites’ or ‘useless eaters’ and you may feel a slight crawling sensation under your skin,” he said.

It is this sensation, he said, that is the basis of abortionists’ outrage at the comparison of abortion with the Holocaust and other historic atrocities like the slave trade. These comparisons form the basis of the Genocide Awareness Project’s displays used by Stephenson and his colleagues, who are pioneers in the use of the GAP in Britain.

Founded in the US, GAP is being hailed by those who use it as one of the most effective tools ever created to communicate the pro-life message to the public.

Gregg Cunningham, the founder of the GAP, flew to Britain to give testimony on the project at Stephenson’s trial. People who use the GAP displays, most often at university campuses across the US and Canada, say that accusations of “insensitivity” for talking about the similarities between abortion and the Holocaust, are among the most common objections to their work. But Cunningham says that the differences are only matters of form. Abortion, he says, is simply an as-yet unrecognised form of genocide, no different in outcome for its victims.

On the CBR website, the group quotes Webster’s New World Encyclopedia, 1992, that defines “genocide” as “The deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, racial, religious, political, cultural, ethnic, or other group defined by the exterminators as undesirable.”

“That definition readily applies to abortion,” the group says. In the case of abortion, the “national group” is “unwanted” unborn children “and they are now being destroyed at the rate of nearly 1 out of every 3 conceived”.

“They are being terminated in an elaborate network of killing centers.”

Stephenson says his British group always welcomes opposition, which gives the group more opportunities to explain why abortion is a form of genocide.

“Compare abortion provider’s literature sanitizing the process of abortion with calming keywords like ‘Gentle,’ ‘safe’ and ‘healthcare’ with the Waffen SS calming Jews entering the gas chambers, disguising them as ‘showers’ we might be forgiven for thinking there are some moral similarities here,” Stephenson told LSN.

“Abortion providers want their work hidden from public view because when it is seen it is despised.

“Of course in a ‘Me’ culture the response to seeing abortion imagery is often ‘That’s disgusting…you shouldn’t show it’ as opposed to ‘That’s disgusting…they shouldn’t do it.’”

A major part of Stephenson’s winning argument in court was that the pictures are, simply, the truth, and as such cannot be a form of “abuse” as the police had charged.

It was later revealed that police only made the arrest after PBAS had pressured the local council into acting against the pro-life group, raising the suggestion that they are feeling the pinch in their business because of the demonstrations. BPAS, officially a registered charity, listed their income with the Charity Commission last year as a total £25.536 million. 

Clare Murphy, Stephenson said, is upset that these “distressing” images are being shown to women coming to BPAS for abortions. But in doing so, she is merely admitting that abortion, when it is clearly and accurately depicted, is deeply upsetting.

But having made the admission, Murphy and her BPAS colleagues will only question the “morality of those showing the pictures,” not her own in condoning the act they depict, said Stephenson.

“She wants exclusive access to these vulnerable women with no accountability.”

“Clare Murphy and Ann Furedi don’t want you to see what they will do to the unborn child because they don’t want to defend genocide.”