STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Karen Paley
The National Council of Jewish Women believes, as the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees, that no one religion should be enshrined in law or dictate public policy on any issue—including abortion.[1]
“No,” we told the two Fairfax County policemen who rang the doorbell of our Fairfax, Virginia home at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, August 20, 2023. “No, we have not received an antisemitic flyer.” An hour later we found just that under a windshield wiper on my wife’s steel gray Subaru Outback. The flyer packs a lot of antagonism into one page.[2] It begins:
To Whom It May Concern,
Don’t be UNAMEIRICAN-Let the good people spread the
word; the truth. This is not a targeted attack, just some white
folks sick of the system.
God Bless You! (sic)
Then front and centered: EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF ABORTION IS JEWISH.
The oversized script shouts the theme to readers. In case they do not understand how bad Jews are, these three lines are balanced on either side with images of a fully identifiable baby inside what is presumably a womb.
Notwithstanding the anticipated and then denied objection, (“this is not a targeted attack”), the one-page flyer targets nine individuals, unnamed but captured in cameo photos with Jewish stars, each of whom, the flyer alleges, played a major pro-abortion or pro-contraception role going back to the nineteenth century. This mockery of photo-journalism is followed by references to two harshly antisemitic texts in the New Testament and QR scan codes that open two sensationalist videos in an attempt to reinforce their case. After three penultimate quotes, the document closes with another declaration of innocence.
These flyers were distributed randomly without malicious intent.
My Reaction
I studied antisemitism for decades, beginning in the 1990s as a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University when I focused on Holocaust narratives. From 1995 to 2008 I read hundreds of them and later designed and taught the “special topic” course Holocaust Literature four times at the largely Catholic Rhode Island College. The last time I was the target of Jewish hatred was almost sixty years ago while a student at Brookline High School. There were Jews and there were Catholics. A young girl named Kathy Hutchinson came at me yelling, “Kike,” while punching me in the face and slamming me into a locker.
My wife and I selected our home because of its proximity to my office, the favorable position of the roof for solar panels, and its single story in anticipation of deteriorating knees. I never gave a thought to the religious composition of the neighborhood as I had already found my community at Adat Shalom Synagogue. My wife and I are obviously partnered. Northern Virginia votes Blue and I participate in events organized by the Springfield Democrats. There had never before been a cause for concern.
The flyer arrived when I was reading Kantika, the recently published historical and semi-autobiographical novel by Boston College professor Elizabeth Graver,[3] a multi-generational account of a Sephardic Jewish family slipping out of Turkey, as antisemitism escalates, to Spain where hatred picks up steam from its own past expulsion of the Jews. Yet in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1907 the child Rebecca feels safe in her community.
Their house has three stories and is made of stone, which does not burn. Down the slope is Balat where the poor Jews live, but her family lives at the top of the hill in Fenet, their neighbors Greek diplomats, Armenian doctors, Jewish bankers and traders like her father, and it is with the daughters of these families and a few equally prosperous Muslim girls that Rebecca and her sister go to Catholic school. (emphasis added, Graver 2)
As secure as Rebecca feels with her stone house and blended society, she and her family keep their practice of Judaism to themselves—no big displays.
I, too, have felt comfortable in my community, despite lots of Christmas creches and lights in season, with no menorahs on display for Hanukah. Yet, not without conflict, I leave the necklace with my Jewish star hanging on the bedroom doorknob, telling myself that I don’t like religious displays. Maybe there is more to my story than I thought. When I could not find Gold’s red beet horseradish in any of the local grocery stores for the Jewish New Year the month following the flyer distribution, I realized there is not a big market for Jewish customers here. The writers must have felt confident that the only recipients of their hate mail would be non-Jews. The flyer jolted me out of my false cocoon and I began researching and writing in response as if on a rhetorical assignment in grad school. The process held any personal fear at bay.
Fundamental difference: when does life begin?
The writers assume agreement from their audience that life begins at conception and the fetus is a human life; it is already a baby prior to birth. Judaism holds another position. The fetus is not viewed as separate from the parent’s body until birth begins and the first breath of oxygen into the lungs allows the soul to enter the body and it becomes a person.[4] Life begins at birth and preserving the mother’s life is valued. Nonetheless, the flyer portrays nine Jews as murderers (for the most part acting alone) in preventing birth. The last one is called “a child killer.”
The Jewish Targets
While the targets are imaged in the flyer, none of them are named. It is necessary to research them by the captions.
Etienne-Emile Baulieu
The first of the unnamed 9 appears with the caption:
“FATHER” OF THE “ABORTION PILL”
KNOWN WORLDWIDE FOR HIS WORK ON RU486 (MIFEPRISTONE).
The first hit with a Google search brings up Etienne-Emile Baulieu, the French and Jewish biochemist, endocrinologist, and co-author of The “Abortion Pill”: RU-486-A Woman’s Choice published in 1990.[5] The pill was the result of a collaboration between chemists and pharmacologists at the Rousel-Uclaf laboratories in Romainville, France in 1980 (Baulieu 17). I do not know how many on his team were Jewish.
The key phrase in the caption, “Abortion Pill,” is in quotes just as it is on the book’s cover. Baulieu argues that the pill interferes with one of the earliest stages of gestation before the embryo can bond to the wall of the uterus; he calls it a “contragestive.”
Contraception prevents fertilisation. Abortion excises a fetus. Contragestion works in a middle range, countering gestation before implantation or in its earliest stages. (18).
At the time the World Health organization estimated that 200,000 women were dying annually from abortions (17). Baulieu wanted a safe alternative to the illegal and fatal procedures.
Baulieu embraces neither the Catholic position that “personhood” begins at conception nor the Jewish position that it begins at birth.
Doctors agree that pregnancy starts with implantation, but no one can say when this function of human life becomes a human life…More than half the time zygotes [fertilized eggs] miscarry spontaneously as a protection against birth anomalies (16). While writing as a scientist, he lets the reader know he is a father of three and grandfather of seven “with the eighth on the way” (20). I do not like abortion. But neither do I believe a women should be deprived of their most fundamental rights (20).
Alan Guttmacher
Next on the list of Jewish enemies is the “PRESIDENT OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD AND VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN EUGENICS SOCIETY” (sic).
Another quick online search reveals the subject to be Jewish obstetrician and gynecologist Alan Frank Guttmacher. His NY Times obituary refers to him as “a pioneer in family planning.”[6] Guttmacher believed in a woman’s right to choose when to have babies and was an advocate for voluntary birth control. He supported birth control pills and an intrauterine device for preventing pregnancy, the Lippes Loop. By including Guttmacher, the flyer writers moves the reader from a strict anti-abortion stance to the Catholic anti-birth control position.
Fania Mindell
Mindell is one of two in the flyer whose name is linked to Margaret Sanger, “STARTED PLANNED PARENTHOOD WITH MARGARET SANGER AND HER SISTER, ETHEL BYRNE.”
The three women opened the Brownsville Clinic in Brooklyn, New York in 1916, the first birth control clinic in the United States. They were all incarcerated as a result.
Neither Sanger nor her sister were Jewish yet their names are annexed to Mindell’s. WHY? Mindell is comparatively unknown. The writers’ argument “everything about abortion is Jewish” falls apart as the non-Jew Sanger is clearly the agent here. Sanger is said to have coined the phrase “birth control” and the clinic is seen as the beginning of the organization Planned Parenthood.[7]
Further, as discussed in relation to Guttmacher, the women’s focus was on contraception, not abortion. They were opposed to the Comstock Law which made selling birth control a federal offense.[8] Without any explanation the writers manipulate the reader into lumping contraception with abortion, preventing pregnancy with ending pregnancy.
Lawrence Lader
“THE FOUNDING FATHER OF THE ABORTION MOVEMENT ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE PRO-ABORTION GROUP NARAL.”
Although missing a citation, the writers take their attribution, “father of the abortion movement” from none other than feminist Betty Friedan.[9]
Lawrence Lader was a prolific writer and activist in the pro-abortion movement for decades. The New York Times declares that his publication Abortion (1966) is “one of the first carefully documented books on the subject.”[10]
Lader used an argument from a Supreme Court case in 1965 which overturned the Comstock Law in Connecticut. The case applied the individual right to privacy to the areas of sexuality and family planning. “When the court made abortion legal in Roe vs. Wade [in 1973], it leaned heavily on the Connecticut case and cited Mr. Lader’s book at least seven times.”[11] It is no wonder my neighborhood antisemites included him in their list of culprits. Lader attacked the church for “trying to legalize its moral codes”[12] and even attempted to stop the IRS from granting tax-exempt status to the Catholic church because its anti-abortion campaign is political.
Henry Morgentaler
The next unnamed target is readily identified on the internet. “’FATHER OF ABORTION IN CANADA.’ FIRST DOCTOR IN NORTH AMERICA TO USE VACUUM ASPIRATION PRESIDENT OF THE HUMANIST ASSOCIATION OF CANADA, ’68-‘99.”
Morgentaler opened twenty abortion clinics in Canada over the course of his career. He spent time in court, either challenging the constitutionality of the abortion law or repeatedly being tried for performing illegal abortions.[13]
Gregory Pincus
“’FATHER OF THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL’ WORKED WITH MARGARET SANGER AND ABRAHAM STONE TO BEGIN HORMONAL CONTRACEPTIVE RESEARCH.”
The descriptors easily lead to the unnamed offender. Like Guttmacher, Gregory Pincus is targeted for his work in birth control. If there is no conception, there is no fetus, no living entity. The flyer writers continue to conflate one thing with another, birth control with abortion. Pincus was working on in-vitro fertilization which would eventually “enable tens of thousands of couples to overcome infertility.”[14] At that time Margaret Sanger, the non-Jew referenced for a second time, called on the scientific community to develop an oral contraceptive. Pincus responded and recruited the Chinese American physiologist Min Chueh Chang who had been able “to suppress ovulation in laboratory animals.”[15] The writers do not name Chang as it would undercut the theme that “everything about abortion is Jewish.”
Malvin Weisberg
“OPERATED AN ABORTION CLINIC IN CALIFORNIA WHERE 16,431 ABORTED FETUSES WERE STORED IN HIS SHIPPING CONTAINER.”
This sensationalized headline is misleading. Weisberg owned a pathology lab for testing and disposal of fetuses; the pregnancies were terminated by medical professionals in the area.[16] The headline implies that he was the one who aborted the fetuses. They were discovered when the storage container was repossessed due to lack of payment. This story is so crucial to the writers that near the bottom of the flyer they attach a link to a YouTube video which repeats the same lie about the pathologist.
Paul Ehrlich
“’FATHER OF THE OVERPOPULATION THEORY’ THE POPULATION BOMB (1968).”
The Population Bomb was written by Ehrlich and his wife Anne; it predicted the demise of humankind due to insufficient food and overpopulation.[17] At first ignored, the book caught on and Ehrlich was repeatedly invited to the Johnny Carson show. He supported voluntary and then involuntary methods of reducing birthrates. Among these methods were birth control, contraception and even forced sterilization. Again, the flyer includes a scientist who was active in birth control and not abortion. His predictions of mass starvation as a result of overpopulation have not materialized.[18]
Julius Schmid
“’KING OF CONDOMS.’ TO HIDE HEBREW ORIGINS, HE MARKETED USING MIDDLE EASTERN NAMES SUCH AS RAMSES AND SHEIK.”
The final unnamed target of the anti-Jewish anti-abortion writers is so offensive to the writers that they make the case about him in their caption. Schmid bought a sausage company in 1983 and then founded his condom business.[19] It is more likely that he named his condoms Ramses and Sheik for marketing reasons than “to hide his Hebrew identity.” These names convey power. Ramesses II was a pharaoh and a sheik is a leader or head of a tribe. This type of branding would appeal to male virility. Schmid as a brand name would fall flat.
John 8:44
As if the flyer had not already done enough to weaponize anti-abortion sentiment in the service of antisemitism, the writers tack on scan codes which appear to be for two verses in the New Testament, John 8:44 and Revelations 3:9. However, when I open the scan for John 8:44, what I see is a YouTube video entitled:
JEWISH ABORTION DR. MELVIN
WEISBERGER CAUGHT WITH 17,000 DEAD
BABIES IN A SHIPPING CONTAINER
As mentioned, Weisberger was not an abortion doctor but the owner of a pathology lab to which medical professionals sent fetuses for testing and disposal. The video refers to the fetuses as “dead babies” and increases the number from 16,431 to an even 17,000. Yes, he was Jewish and, yes, he ran a lab that did the testing. It would have been much harder for the writers and their sources to investigate the religion of Weisberger’s customers, but the need to build hatred against Jews overshadows any desire for journalistic integrity.
The QR scan beneath REV 3:9 opens to a YouTube video of “The Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice” on May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. We see on the screen: “Abortion Access is a Jewish Value” (emphasis mine). One of the speakers declares that an actual life is valued over a potential life. The representation appears to be accurate. At the time I viewed this video, 17 of the 996 comments[20] were left by people with a Nazi logo.
The Books of John and Revelations in the New Testament were written between 70 and 110 years after the death of Jesus. It is unlikely that the author(s) had any direct contact with him. Their representation of the voice of “Jesus” is very harsh. More importantly, these passages have nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with hatred of Jews.
In John 8:44 Jesus is talking to a group of Jews in Jerusalem; some believed in him and some thought he was a con man. His words are bold and self-aggrandizing, always linking himself to the “Father” in contrast to the “father” whom he equates with the devil.
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and a father of lies. John 8:44
This “Jesus” compares himself to the “liars” as the son of the true “Father.” This passage from the Book of John became a common trope: a Jew is the offspring of the devil.
Rev 3:9
Revelation tells us that Jesus sent his angel to John “who testifies to everything he saw.”[21] In the previous section (Rev 3:8) “Jesus” is speaking to the members of the Church in an ancient town named Philadelphia[22] who, “despite having little strength,” “have kept [his] word and not denied [his] name.” Apparently, there are good Jews in contrast to the false Jews.
I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars--I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. (Rev 3:9)
Any Jew who followed John’s representation of an angry defensive Jesus is a good Jew.
FINAL QUOTES
As if any more could have been crammed into this one-page flyer, there are three one-line quotes in a font so small I almost missed them. In fact, I used the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) as my own source before having seen it was already there.
“A FETUS IS NOT CONSIDERED A PERSON UNDER JEWISH LAW”
NATIONAL COUCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN (sic)
I was surprised to learn this Jewish perspective: the fetus does not become a person until they are born; upon inhalation the soul enters the baby and it becomes human.
The penultimate tiny quote READS:
“ABORTION IS A JEWISH VALUE”
NATIONAL COUCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN (sic)
The writers take great liberty with their source. The statement on Judaism and Abortion from the National Council of Jewish Women is much more specific.
NCJW works to ensure that every single person can make their own moral and faith-informed decisions about their body, their health, and future. Our Jewish values compel us to support full access to safe and legal abortion care as basic health care.[23](emphasis mine)
The Jewish value is support of access to safe and legal abortion based upon the individual’s “faith-informed decision.” The source is misrepresented. Even the accompanying video makes it clear that having access to abortion is the Jewish value. This very different from saying abortion is a Jewish value.
The third quote is the most egregious of the lies and distortions that precede it.
“BEING ANTI-ABORTION IS ANTI-SEMITIC”
VICTORIA POLIN, JEWISH AUTHOR AND SELF-PROCLAIMED CHILD KILLER
Polin founded the Awareness Center to support Jewish victims of sexual abuse. Oprah Winfey invited her on the show and Polin told the public her family belonged to a Satanic cult where “she was regularly sexually abused since a baby” and forced to participate in the murder of babies.[24] When the unethical writers misrepresent Polin’s story of having been forced to participate in something and instead describe her as a “self-proclaimed child killer,” they make it seem as if she not only had free choice but that it was pleasurable. After all we do not use the phrase “self-proclaim” to describe something that was forced upon us.
In their article “The Jewish Case for Abortion Rights,” Sheila Katz and Danya Ruttenberg make clear the religious differences in abortion. Simply put, the Christian view is life begins at conception and the Jewish view is life begins at birth. Because Jews believe that “abortion is absolutely required when the life of the pregnant woman is at risk,” making abortion illegal is a violation of their religious freedom.[25] “Those who seek to restrict abortion rights are seeking to impose their religious views on others, which is inherently unconstitutional.”[26] Yet separating church and state on this issue seems impossible. The anti-abortionists may have felt their religious freedom was restricted during the era of Roe vs. Wade.
Writing is Fighting
I might have regarded this flyer as so contemptible it did not deserve a lengthy rebuttal. Yet antisemitism is contagious and can spread easily as unhappy people look for a source of misery outside of themselves. Projection of blame for economic downfall was a Nazi ploy, and to use a contemporary expression, Hitler’s message did “go viral.”
I return to Elizabeth Graver’s semi-autobiographical historical novel Kantika, the book I was reading when the flyer intruded my life. Despite the naïve comfort level Rebecca had in her mixed neighborhood in Constantinople, things go badly for her father and other Jews. He tells the family, “It takes nothing at all for them to turn on us” (57). Even after two distributors were caught, the flyer re-emerged in my community after the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli response.
For months I remained so focused on trying to debunk the flyer, that it never occurred to me to see what others thought. The flyer made me wary of my neighbors; maybe they agreed with it. When I did start reaching out to other recipients, I found the opposite.
Much anger was expressed in a dialog on the Greenbriar Neighborhood FaceBook page. It began with an invitation from Laura “to open a conversation about how we can show support for our Jewish neighbors.” Thirty-eight responses ensued with a similar sentiment: antisemitism is bad and we need to support our Jewish neighbors. No comments showed any hatred of Jews. Instead, what I read is:
“We also got one in our mailbox. It went straight to the trash.”
“Certainly not the message I want in our neighborhood!”
“A basic question might be—why did this happen here and now?”
“Unfortunately, it is always with us.”
“If they target one of us, they will soon target all of us. To my Jewish neighbors, you are not alone.”
“It is disgusting that there are people in our area who would do such a thing. I hope the police find the culprits and prosecute. Unfortunately, I think antisemitism has reared its ugly head in many areas of our country. I thought and hoped we were so far beyond that.”
I want to thank everyone for their kindness at this difficult time. The idiots who spread this material are trying to create fear and divide us. Thanks everyone, for your support.
Particularize; Don’t Essentialize
Members of groups do not all think alike; when we make this assumption, we are essentializing or generalizing about a group of people. There is a strong Jewish belief that life begins at birth; and preserving a mother’s life is highly valued. However, some Jews oppose abortion or do not see it as a top priority. I had never heard of the Jewish belief that life begins at birth until researching this essay. Having experienced an illegal abortion in the 1960s, I cannot say I agree.[27]
Sources
[1] www.ncjw.org
[2] See attached.
[3] Graver, Elizabeth. Kantika, a Novel. NY: Henry Holt, 2023.
[4] “Judaism and Abortion.” www.ncjw.org
[5] Baulieu, Etienne-Emile with Mort Rosenblum. The « Abortion Pill. » NY: Simon and Schuster, 1990
[6] Whitman, Alden. “Alan Guttmacher, Pioneer in Family Planning, Dies.” https:www.nytimes.com/1974/03/19/archives/alan-guttmacher-pioneer-in-family-planning-dies-planned.html
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fania_Mindell.
[8] Congress passed the Comstock Act in 1873 making the distribution of birth control a federal offense. A Supreme Court decision in 1965 rendered the various Comstock Laws null and void.
[9] https://aleteia.org/2022/06/26/the-father-of-the-abortion-movement-and-his-crusade-against-the-catholic-church/
[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/myregion/10lader.html
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgentaler#:~:text=Henekh%2....orgentaler%2c%20CM,expanding%20abortion%20rights%20in%20Canada
[14] Segal, Sheldon. https://www.prb.org/resources/gregory-pincus-father-of-the-pill
[15] Ibid.
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wik/Los_Angeles_fetus_disposal_scandal
[17] Ehrlich, Paul R. The Population Bomb. Sierra Club/Ballantine Books, 1968.
[18] Mann, Charles. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/
[19] Lieberman, Holly. https://daily.jstor.org/daily-author/halle-liberman/); 8 June 2017.f
[20] Viewed on October 22, 2023 at 2:40 p.m. EST
[21] Rev 1:2
[22] This is one of the seven churches in the province of Asia. Rev 1:4
[23] www.ncjw.org
[24] https://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/viki_polin.htm
[25] Katz, Sheila and Ruttenberg Danya. “The Jewish Case for Abortion Rights.” https://www.newsweek.com/abortion-jewish-right-scotus-june-medical-services-louisiana-constitution
[26] Ibid.
[27] See “Small Talk: Conversation with a Little One” forthcoming in The Avalon Literary Review, January 2024.
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Once an English professor, Karen Paley re-trained as a Financial Advisor nine years ago. She is writing a memoir in essays on surviving a communist cult, brain surgery, losing a sister to nicotine, and reversing assimilation after finding a box of letters from the old country. Paley’s story of coming out late in life, “The Tomboy of Clinton Road,” appeared in Journal 2023 from the Virginia Writers Club. “Small Talk: Conversation with a Little One,” an essay about her illegal abortion, is forthcoming in Avalon Literary Review in January. Other publications include I-Writing: The Politics and Practice of Teaching the Personal Narrative (So. Illinois UP); articles in Boston Woman, Diversity, Dreaming, Ladies Home Journal, Mothering, Na’Amat Woman, Writing on the Edge, The Yale Journal of the Humanities in Medicine; and an essay in Traditions of Eloquence (Fordham UP).
