New York, NY, October 30, 1998…A strain of anti-Semitism runs through the extreme factions of the anti-abortion movement, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In the days following the fatal shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian, a Buffalo, NY gynecologist-obstetrician who performed abortions, speculation has surfaced as to whether Dr. Slepian may have been targeted because he was a Jew. Four of the five abortion providers shot by a sniper or snipers in Canada and the United States since 1994 have been Jewish.

"While there is no evidence to suggest that anti-Semitism was a motive for the attacks, we are deeply concerned about the strain of anti-Semitism running through some extreme factions of the movement," said Abraham H. Foxman ADL National Director. "They make insidious claims that Jewish doctors control the practice and industry of abortion, often comparing them to Nazi war criminals." He named Human Life International, a major anti-abortion group with a history of anti-Semitism, as ‘inordinately preoccupied with Jews."

Mr. Foxman added that "hideous and offensive" comparisons to the Holocaust were regularly made by some groups to manipulate emotions. "Whatever one’s position on this heartrending issue, analogizing abortion to the Nazi government’s campaign to murder every Jew in the world diminishes the truth of the Holocaust and implies that ordinary women engaging in a lawful act are Nazis."

Five days after Dr. Slepian’s murder, an anonymous caller threatened the life of another Buffalo-area obstetrician who performed abortions. Authorities believe the caller previously slipped a "wanted poster" of Dr. Slepian into a police station, apparently in the station washroom. Slepian’s face had been crossed out and the words "Jew" and "killer" were written across the photo.

While most of the organized anti-abortion movement decries bigotry and violence, ADL’s investigation revealed that some anti-abortion groups and a few individuals, along with some extremist anti-Semitic groups, single out Jewish doctors who perform the procedure or describe Jews as controlling the abortion "industry."

Followings are some examples of the use anti-Semitism and the Holocaust by anti-abortion extremists:

• Human Life International (HLI), a Virginia-based anti-abortion group, has singled out Jews as disproportionately responsible for, even controlling, the abortion-rights movement. The organization’s founder, Father Paul Marx, wrote as long ago as 1977: "I do not blame the Jews for the abortion movement. I do say, and will say because it is the truth, that it is a strange thing how many leaders in the abortion movement are Jewish." Marx supported his observation by noting, "A famous genetics professor in Paris told me that the leaders of the abortion movement in France were Jewish. I saw one, a Jewish female liar, do her thing on behalf of abortion at the World Population Conference in Bucharest."

  Marx also stated: "The fact is, I am surprised and shocked by the number of Jews who lead the abortion movement in so many countries after their horrendous experience with Hitler…. My medical friends, and I have many, have told me again and again how many Jewish doctors do abortions freely. From a highly reliable source in a city I shall not name for the moment, I learned of a Jewish doctor who does sixteen abortions every Saturday morning for $300.00 each."

  A decade later, in a 1987 newsletter, Marx charged: "There’s a most ironic side to the widespread, furious objections of some Jews (and others) to Pope John Paul II’s routine diplomatic reception of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim: 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 babies.

  "It’s obvious to anyone who’s studied the abortion movement in the Western world as long as I have (25 years), that a large segment of the Jews that is disloyal to the teachings of Judaism more or less leads the abortion movement."

  In 1993, an article in HLI’s newsletter declared: "Today, certain members of this people whose ancient religion and culture managed to survive Auschwitz and Buchenwald are presiding over the greatest Holocaust in the history of the world. American Jews have been leaders in establishing and defending the efficient destruction of more than 30 million preborn children in this country….Why are the victims of one Holocaust perpetrating another?"

• In 1995, a local Virginia group, Project Life-Nova circulated flyers that compared Jewish abortion providers with Nazi war criminals. The flyers were headlined "not wanted in our community," and included doctors’ photographs, home phone numbers and addresses, birthdates, spouses’ names. While not all the doctors targeted were Jewish, only the flyers depicting Jewish doctors included a paragraph about the Holocaust – asserting that the Nazis provided abortion for Jewish women as part of their extermination campaign, and that abortion was prosecuted at Nuremberg as a war crime. The flyers called on the doctors to "repent before God."

• Following a murderous attack on a Brookline, Massachusetts, clinic in 1994, an administrator at the clinic stated that it had previously received bomb threats and hate mail. "That was all really routine….The hate mail was really graphic, really violent. It usually centered on killing Jew doctors. It said things like, ‘Hitler was right.’ There were really grisly drawings."

Abortion and the Holocaust

Many groups and activists within the anti-abortion movement draw analogies between abortion and the Holocaust. This practice ranges from invoking a comparison to reproducing photographs of Jewish corpses alongside those of aborted fetuses to naming an anti-abortion web site "The American Holocaust Memorial." Examples include:

• "The American Holocaust Memorial" web site is dedicated to "uncovering" the "frightening correlation between the American holocaust of abortion and the NAZI holocaust of World War II." Gruesome photographs of slaughtered Jews and dismembered fetuses are compared in order to demonstrate that "the ‘Pro-Choice’ campaign [is] a thinly veiled ‘Final Solution’ for the unwanted unborn child."

• "The Nuremberg Files," also a web site, calls itself "a coalition of concerned citizens throughout the USA…cooperating in collecting dossiers on abortionists in anticipation that one day we may be able to hold them on trial for crimes against humanity." It states that many Nazi war criminals avoided punishment for their crimes due to lack of evidence, and "we do not want the same thing to happen when the day comes to charge abortionists with their crimes."

  The site provides a mailing address and asks viewers to collect and submit "evidence" – including any personal information, videotapes or photos, criminal records, and affidavits by former employees or spouses – about doctors who perform abortions and others involved in safeguarding abortion for women who choose it.

  Stating that its goal is "to record the name of every person working in the baby slaughter business across the United States of America," the site includes a list, under a graphic of dripping blood, of the names of abortion doctors, clinic owners and workers, allegedly sympathetic judges, politicians, and law enforcement authorities, and "miscellaneous spouses & other blood flunkies." A line is drawn through the names of the doctors and other personnel who have been murdered.

Extremist Groups

• The Posse Comitatus, an anti-Semitic organization whose anti-government views have been influential in the militia movement, reported the Slepian killing on its web site, then stated: "Not much needs to be said. The justice in the ‘putting to DEATH’ of this jewish [sic] abortionist says it all!…. You can be sure that it is a White Man, one of His True Chosen, that is exacting YHVH’s vengeance upon these murdering vipers! I Pray that other True Israelite Warriors across this land continue to rid our country of these murdering bastards!"

• Holy War, an Oslo-based Internet hate site that posts English-language web pages, also merges an anti-abortion viewpoint with anti-Semitism. It calls abortion "the one and only ‘Holocaust’ ever!" and exhorts readers to "Stop the ‘racist Jewish’ abortion industry that cost [sic] the life of 50 million human beings every year!"

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.