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March 31, 2006

Pro-Lifers Compare Abortion with Genocide

Students at the University of Calgary in Canada have been conducting a campaign called Campus for Life Genocide Awareness Project, in which they erect public displays that include large photographs of aborted fetuses alongside photographs of victims of the Holocaust and the 1994 Rwandan genocide – and claim the two are similar.

“In the past, when governments have stripped person-hood status from human beings, genocide has taken place. That’s what happened during the Holocaust, that’s what happened in Rwanda, that’s what happened on the killing fields of Cambodia. In every case, that is wrong. Just like the unborn, that is wrong.”

The reason this rubs me wrong is that the difference between the two is so vast one must wonder whether these pro-lifers really understand what genocide is.

Last night I had a lengthy conversation with a very good friend of mine, a Tutsi man whose sister and mother escaped the Rwandan brutality back in 1994 (in which 800,000 died) after literally a week of running on foot for their lives before reaching safety. My friend had grown up in Rwanda, but had traveled to another country to attend university and ultimately decided to settle outside Rwanda because of rising tensions there. All his friends and family, however, were in Rwanda when the Hutus began massacring their long-time Tutsi enemies. He told me he had a photograph of his middle school class of 32 students. Of the group, only five survived the massacre – and one of them was a Hutu on trial for war crimes as a result of the role he had played in butchering his friends and neighbors.

My friend also has photographs of himself with Paul Rusesabagina, who was an acquaintance of his from school. Paul was the hotel manager who managed to save more than a thousand people in the story memorialized in the film Hotel Rwanda. He said you would never have imagined that Paul would become known across the entire globe as a hero. But circumstances made heros of many during that horror. My friend tells me he knows many heroic stories that will never be told, and that he knew hundreds of Hutu people who were brutally killed for trying to hide or protect Tutsis during that cruel attack.

My friend also knew Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the Hutu Seventh-Day Adventist pastor who was recently convicted by the War Crimes Tribunal. He said the tragedy of it was that the man, whom he believes was blameless, was trapped by an unimaginable and inhuman set of circumstances. He had always been an arrogant man, and consequently he was not liked by his community. When the massacre began, he literally could do nothing to stop it without sacrificing his own life in the process. But because he was so disliked, the few Tutsis who survived enacted their revenge against him by telling the Tribunal he was complicit in the attacks. But in truth, like so many others, he was forced to stand by helplessly and watch the massacre.

Four years after the genocide the killing continued, though on a smaller scale. 300,000 Rwandan children were growing up in homes headed by other children. There were literally no adults to care for them. The hunger, suffering, exploitation and abuse these children suffered for years after having already survived the trauma of watching their parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, and neighbors being literally hacked to death by each other has left unimaginable scars. Children were even forced to kill other children with hoes. It is no surprise that 12 years later, the hatred between the two tribes cannot be healed; far too much pain has been inflicted by both sides in what has been an ongoing, mutual slaughter spanning decades. Approximately one of every 14 people in the country died in 100 days – to put it in perspective, within a country the size of a small state people died at the rate of three September 11 attacks a day for 100 days. It is an unfathomable thing.

Rwanda, Armenia, Darfur, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Europe (under Hitler), Yugoslavia, Bosnia – despite all the awareness and concern, genocide on a massive scale has continued throughout the world unabated. The numbers of dead overwhelm the soul. I do not understand the evil, just as I do not understand how people can survive such brutality, pick up the pieces of their lives, and move on.

But I do know this. There is no comparison between the utter horror and evil of genocide and the practice of abortion. Absolutely none.

Posted by Becky at March 31, 2006 02:45 PM