Gloria Steinem said on NBC’s “Today” Tuesday that pro-life activists were using tactics similar to Adolf Hitler. The 84-year-old feminist icon made a Nazi reference to Donald Trump and his anti-abortion supporters.
“Another is why Hitler was actually elected — and he was elected — and he campaigned against abortion. That was he padlocked the family planning clinics, OK, so that is still relevant in terms of the right-wing,” Steinem said.
Gloria Steinem mulls pro-life movement as Hitler-like threat: ‘He campaigned against abortion’ https://t.co/yHkX1M9Bls
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) February 25, 2019
She was promoting the third edition of her 1983 book “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.” After Steinem made her Hitler reference, the NBC hosts basically ignored it and continued talking about her book.
But conservatives didn’t ignore it.
“I’m afraid Gloria is getting a bit dotty in her old age,” Fox News Laura Ingraham said Tuesday night. “She is essentially arguing that in order to save humanity, you have to kill off more humans.”
Ingraham also corrected Steinem. “Hitler, just like Planned Parenthood, practiced and defended mass extermination,” Ingraham said, “all in the name of racial purity, which is exactly what the founder of Planned Parenthood believed. Margaret Sanger believed deeply in eugenics.”
Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza also corrected Steinem.
Just saw a strange clip on @IngrahamAngle of Gloria Steinem insisting Hitler was anti-abortion. A big lie! Hitler was vehemently anti-abortion for Nordic Germans, and vehemently pro-abortion for the so-called inferior races. This can hardly be called a pro-life position!
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 27, 2019
“Just saw a strange clip on @IngrahamAngle of Gloria Steinem insisting Hitler was anti-abortion,” D’Souza tweeted. “A big lie!”
“Hitler was vehemently anti-abortion for Nordic Germans, and vehemently pro-abortion for the so-called inferior races,” D’Souza noted. “This can hardly be called a pro-life position!”
Indeed. Hitler was hell-bent on mass genocide, murdering millions of Jews and others, while at the same time promoting large families for what the Nazis called the “Aryan race.” To lump the dictator of the Third Reich in with activists today trying to protect the unborn is at the very least, intellectually dishonest.
Steinem’s original Nazi comparison came from her 1980 essay “If Hitler Were Alive, Whose Side Would He Be On?” published in Ms. magazine and is included in her book. In the essay, Steinem goes after pro-lifers and religious conservatives during a time when Ronald Reagan was about to be elected president.
It’s a good reminder that these Republican-Nazi comparisons by liberals did not start with President Trump.
Gloria Steinem should be ashamed for equating activists who want to preserve life with one of the most murderous regimes of the 20th century. At the least, she could pick up a history book.