Posted on 10/31/2007 4:02:09 PM PDT by wagglebee
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is under fire from Jewish groups after a speech he gave at a pro-life event the weekend before last. In the address to the Family Research Council, the former Arkansas governor referred to the deaths of 45-50 million unborn children from abortion as a holocaust.
In the speech, he linked the issues of abortion and illegal immigration -- saying the destruction of tens of millions of unborn children has left the U.S. with a worker shortage.
“Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our work force,” Huckabee said in the speech.
“It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our work force had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973," he explained.
Following the speech, the Anti-Defamation League called on presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to refrain from invoking Holocaust imagery in future comments on the campaign trail.
In a letter to Governor Huckabee, ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said: "The Holocaust was a unique tragedy in human history."
"We find the use of analogies to the Holocaust in other contexts deeply painful, disturbing and offensive," Foxman said. "Such analogies can only trivialize and diminish the horror, and cause further pain to Holocaust survivors and to those alive today who lost friends and loved ones."
But pro-life advocates have now come to Huckabee's defense saying that his use of the term was not meant as an offense to Jewish people but to underscore the equal tragedy in the destruction of human life.
Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Working Families, told The Jewish Daily Forward, “I’m surprised that it’s considered controversial when that is a common reference."
“Among pro-lifers, both events are seen as tragic, but the death toll now from abortion is between 40 and 50 million in the United States since 1973," Hamrick explained. "Now that’s a huge number of people who are dead and gone.”
Asked if he approved of Huckabee’s use of the word “holocaust,” Marvin Olasky, a conservative columnist and onetime Bush adviser, told the newspaper, he believed the word was “objectively” accurate.
Olasky said Huckabee used the term “honestly and respectfully" but he is generally “subjectively uncomfortable” with the word’s adoption by those who oppose legalized abortion.
Huckabee has been picking up more support lately in the polls, in part because some of the pro-life advocates who had been in Sam Brownback's camp shifted to him.
Pro-Life Ping
Freepmail wagglebee or little jeremiah to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
He shouldn’t worry. More people will vote for him for that position than will vote against him. I never understand why the Jewish community votes overwhelmingly Democrat.
Its an understatement....
Of all the reasons to put fire on the Huckster, THIS is not it.
Abortion in America has killed so many people I’ve lost count.
Don’t call it a Genocide. We’ll get the Turks mad at us.
“Holocaust”
As horrible as the Holocaust was, it pales in comparison to the 50 million plus babies murdered in America since Roe v. Wade.
It is especially ridiculous when one considers that the term ‘Holocaust’ was not coined for what the Nazis did. It is from the Bible and refers to the pagan practice of sacrificing children to their gods! Strictly speaking it is more appropriate for the abortion holocaust than for the Nazi holocaust.
He’s absolutely right. If we actually had all those aborted children with us now, we wouldn’t have a thing to worry about from the Muslims. In fact, even immigration wouldn’t be a problem, because we would have enough people to do our jobs.
Under-population is a far greater problem for a country than overpopulation, and in fact was probably one of the things that led to the fall of Rome.
Have to say I agree with Huckabee on this. The deliberate extermination of millions of people qualifies as a holocaust in my book. I don’t think that fact diminishes the Jewish experience during WWII at all.
Jews don’t own the word “holocaust”.
Nobody does.
Back off my First Amendment rights, or try to back up the claim with force, because whining means nothing to me.
And nominating Rudy is a vote for continuing the holocaust. No thank you. Rudy needs to be flushed from the Republican party, before he flushes it.
Actually, there has been about a 20% drop in abortion since the early 1990s (I have a feeling that women born in the late 1960s and early 1970s began realizing how lucky they had been and wanted to extend the same gift of life to the next generation), so the true number very close to 50 MILLION (in fact it will probably hit 50 million early next year, right around the 35th anniversary of Roe).
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.html
The more Orthodox Jews generally prefer to call it Shoah.
Me neither. One of the enduring mysteries.
btt
Jews don’t own the word “holocaust”.
Yes they do.
And if you deny it, you’re an anti-semitic nazi!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.