Many people have taken issue with the Genocide Awareness Project, saying that abortion does not match the definition of genocide.

According to the definition of the United Nations, genocide is the destruction of “ … in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group … ” By this definition, abortion would not be considered genocide.

However, the definition from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary states that genocide is “the murder of a whole group of people, especially a whole nation, race or religious group.” The group of people would be unwanted, preborn humans, so by this definition, abortion could be considered genocide.  We could continue to argue over definitions, but I feel it is more important to look at the conceptual similarities.

One such similarity is that the victims are considered to be subhuman.  In Nazi Germany, Jews and other victims were often shown as pigs or rats in cartoons, and referred to as subhuman, or “untermensch.”  Today, unwanted, preborn humans are often referred to as parasites, “blobs of tissue,” or “products of conception.”

Another similarity is how personhood is defined to exclude the victims. In Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court stated: “A free negro of the African race … is not a “citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.”

In the 1973 case Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court stated: “the word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” The fact that Scott v. Sandford was legal at the time, but has since been overturned, shows that legal decisions are not always right. I think these similarities should cause us to pause and think.

Many people have also taken offense at the goriness of the display, calling it disgusting and distasteful.

I have to agree that the photos are disgusting, but I think we need to ask why these photos of dismembered, preborn humans exist. The Holocaust Museum shows horrors to remind us that such atrocities must be prevented.

The purpose of GAP is to show the humanity of the preborn and the violence of abortion, so that we can prevent the killing of innocents.

Daniel Sparks

Mechanical engineering, junior