{"id":13667,"date":"2020-09-01T07:52:17","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T12:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/messagemagazinetesthome.wpcomstaging.com\/?p=13667"},"modified":"2024-07-01T08:28:38","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T13:28:38","slug":"less-than-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openbiblemessage.org\/es\/2020\/09\/less-than-human\/","title":{"rendered":"Less Than Human?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Randall A. Bach<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approximately six million people were annihilated during the Holocaust, a deliberate and planned execution of Jews and other enemies of the Nazis. Today, there is a Holocaust museum in Israel, Yad Vashem, that houses a heart-rending exhibit that honors the men, women, and children who were victims of the Holocaust. I have been there; the experience is sobering. The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. is also worthy of a visit. Viewing the pictures, videos, stories, and artifacts of families whose lives were exterminated with the effectiveness of a slaughterhouse is a painfully emotional experience. I have walked into a room at the Dachau concentration camp, outside Munich, Germany, that victims were told was a shower room. However, instead of receiving a shower upon entry, victims were gassed to death. I peered into the ovens at Dachau where factory-like cremations of victims took place around the clock, belching black smoke and human ashes into the sky.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mind struggled to come to terms with how human beings could be so heartless and calculating as those mass murderers. How could anyone, and especially an entire set of a nation\u2019s leaders, possibly become so demented and depraved, apparently devoid of moral conflict? The perpetrators convinced themselves that their victims were something less than human beings<\/em>.<\/strong> Nazis considered Jews to be expendable like vermin. If people could convince themselves that some human beings were not actually human, then extermination was but a matter of determining mass efficiency to carry out the act. Once that distortion was established then no evil act was considered too heinous. The term for murder on that scale against a people group is genocide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one hundred nations over one century one billion babies have been aborted.i<\/sup><\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I was stunned when I read that statement. How could this possibly be? One billion? The six million people exterminated in the Holocaust are but 0.6 percent of 1 billion. Mind boggling! Sadly, the genocide of abortion is that much greater in scale than the Holocaust. There may be people who object to the comparison. Frankly, I recoil at doing so until I consider how aborted babies\u2019 lives are calculatedly terminated by hideously painful and tortuous procedures. The Holocaust was engineered by people in Nazi garb and inspired by a maniacal leader whereas abortions are administered by people in medical garb with the permission of often desperate mothers-to-be. The mission of the Holocaust was the mass extermination of an entire ethnicity whereas abortions are individually applied. However, in New York City, more black babies are aborted than are born alive (WSJ<\/em>,<\/em> July 18, 2018), indicating a disproportionate ethnic impact. The Holocaust defied international norms and is widely condemned as genocide whereas abortion is widely viewed as a necessity for the health, betterment, and well-being of a mother-to-be. In that view, the health, betterment, and well-being of the unborn infant is not worthy of consideration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abortions hold this in common with the Holocaust: Abortion a<\/em>dvocates and providers <\/em>convince themselves that their victims are something less than human<\/em>. To an abortionist, fetal tissue becomes a baby, a human being, only when \u201cwe\u201d say so and because it is wanted. If the fetal tissue is not wanted, is inconvenient, or deemed unacceptable for some other reason it can be dismembered while alive in the womb. Or as is increasingly finding acceptance, the infant can be terminated at birth, a practice which has historically been considered infanticide. How could we descend to such depravity, to legitimize the termination of innocent life, and on a scale that qualifies as genocide?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe it is important that we approach the matter of abortion on at least three levels: First, to vigorously oppose policies and laws that legitimize abortion as a practice and to help the public realize what a grisly and dehumanizing approach it is to \u201cfamily planning.\u201d Second, we need to extend compassionate love to women who have undergone abortion. According to Focus on the Family: Professional counselors tell us that many women who have had an abortion are not able to <\/p>\n\n\n