About the Author
Opinion Archives
E-mail Scott
Scott's Links


Abortion is a human tragedy

Printed in the Herald-Times, April 16, 2000

To the Editor:

The arrival of the Genocide Awareness Project on the Indiana University campus is great news for the university and the community. This display will be thought provoking and educational, and will generate a much-needed discussion about the tragedy of abortion. Indiana University Students for Life and Connexion should be praised for having the courage to invite GAP to Bloomington.

Many people will be offended, uncomfortable, and unnerved by the GAP display. This is a good thing. When one and a half million unborn babies are being brutally slaughtered every year, we SHOULD be uncomfortable. The pictures of aborted babies GAP will be showing are the truth, pure and simple, and no amount of sugar-coating is done by the likes of Planned Parenthood will hide the bitter reality that abortion is the killing of an unborn baby.

Other people may question the use of comparisons to the Holocaust and to slavery. IU Campus for "Choice" has argued that GAP is "exploiting" the victims of these tragedies. But the only real way to describe the enormity of the shame abortion brings to America is to compare it to tragedies that approach it in magnitude. Hitler's Germany murdered seven million Jews according to recent estimates, but well over thirty million children have died at the hands of America's abortionists. I do not wish to cheapen the impact of genocidal events like the Holocaust, but 30 million abortions can only be discussed in those terms.

Abortion is not an issue that should be confined to the ivory towers of think tanks and to the editorial pages of newspapers in a detached, cold philosophical discussion. Abortion is a real human tragedy that involves real human death, and steps must be taken to ensure that people are aware of exactly what abortion is.

Scott Tibbs.