abortion = lynching and holocaust??!

Something that really upsets is how different "pro-life" groups attempt to scare people away from abortions by associating it with horrible events in history where large groups of people were killed. I just came across one on the Pregnant Pause website: http://www.pregnantpause.org/numbers/lynch.htm

This group compares the number of lynchings from 1882 to 1968 (3446) to the number of abortions chosen by African-Americans from 1973 to 1994 (approx. 10,000,000). This is an insult to those who were violently murdered because of racism and also to these women who have chosen to abort for various reasons. In one of my classes this semester we had to look at images of lynchings that happened in the 20th century in the South. Painful to look at, these were clearly crimes of violence and hatred with the intent to oppress and destroy an entire group of human beings who had lives and families of their own. Comparing a lynching to an abortion is disgusting. Although I cannot claim that all abortions are chosen for reasons that all could agree are "legitimate", abortion clinics do not exist to wipe out an entire group within a population out of hatred and ignorance. However, I do know that there were eugenics movements when birth control was becoming popular in the States to sterilize African Americans and I think this is an atrocity. It is not right though to claim that abortions today have anything to do with a racist movement. One very important fact that is being left out is that these African-American fetus which are aborted are happening because the woman (who is most likely African-American, unless this is just from the father's side) chose to do so. Lynchings happened to African-Americans by ignorant white southern people. Clearly the second is one group doing violence against another, and the first is a conscious decision, not to wipe out one's own group.

A more common comparison is to the Holocaust, which is equally disgusting. On the London, Ontario Right 2 Life website (http://www.right2life.ca/aboutus_aims.shtml) under "Our Aims and Objectives" there is a quote from John Mallon. "Why should the slaughter of six million Jews and countless others qualify as genocide but not the slaughter of 45 million unborn children?" According to John Mallon's personal website (http://www.johnmallon.net/) he has been a Catholic writer for the last 25 years. I can see how he makes the comparison, if you go with the belief that the moment the sperm meets the egg there is a human being. He is claiming that neither the fetus nor the Jews were able to defend themselves and were subjected to another's desire to kill them. However, these people who were killed in the Holocaust were living and breathing human beings with their own lives, their own dreams, their own ideas, and family and loved ones. They were tortured in numerable and horrifying ways. They were targeted for being Jews. There are numerous reasons why women seek abortions but to wipe out an entire group such as the Jewish community is not one of them. This is an insult to the memory of those killed in Death Camps, as well as to the women and doctors who have made the decision to abort. Mallon seems to think that every person who chooses or assists in abortion is another Hitler, capable of killing millions of conscious human beings. How can people even make this comparison?!