Fotosearch / Getty ImagesNazi leaders are pictured at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, during the Nuremberg trials on Nov. 29, 1945. (Fotosearch / Getty Images)
During the vice presidential debate, Mike Pence accused Kamala Harris of having “attacked” a judicial nominee “because they were a member of the Catholic Knights of Columbus, just because the Knights of Columbus holds pro-life views.” An NBC fact check found this religious-based attack was indeed made by Harris.
In next week’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings, Harris will question Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic, on the basis of her pro-life views on abortion.
Should Harris resort to attacks on faith, she will join, I’m afraid, a long list of other proponents of separation of Christian morality and health policy popularized in an earlier era.
Perhaps the most infamous of these was Dr. Gerhard Wagner, head of the Nazi organization of physicians in the 1930s.
He too complained of Catholic opposition to abortion and other elements of the state’s health programs. He wanted health to be left “primarily in the hands of the approximately 20,000 expert physicians with a reliable worldview.” (Catholics need not apply!)
Nuremberg: “Protection of the Law Was Denied to Unborn Children”
Regrettably, today’s Democrats don’t want these questions answered. Nor do Democrats want to know of the parallels between the current U.S. abortion record and the Nazi record of systematically decriminalizing abortion.
Instructions issuing directives to decriminalize abortion were furnished at the Nuremberg trials as evidence for the count of crimes against humanity:
“Abortion must not be punishable in the remaining territory … Institutes and persons who make a business of performing abortions should not be prosecuted by the police.”
Not all Eastern women workers’ abortions were forced. In addition, to the charge of “compelling” abortions, there was also the charge of “encouraging” abortions among Polish women by removing abortion from prosecution in Polish courts.
Though abortion had been decriminalized, the Nuremberg court still judged that “protection of the law was denied the unborn children,” and two SS officers, Richard Hildebrandt and Otto Hofmann, were convicted for “compelling and encouraging abortion,” receiving sentences of 25 years.
Nuremberg abortion trials historian Dr. John Hunt has established that condemnation of abortion was not simply limited to forced abortions but included all abortions. American James McHaney, a Nuremberg prosecutor of the RuSHA/Greifelt Case, called abortion an “inhumane act” and an “act of extermination” and stated that even if a woman’s request for abortion was voluntary, abortion was still a crime against humanity.