A health official in the Trump administration compared abortion to the holocaust as a law school student, Mother Jones reports.
Scott Lloyd, who has come under fire recently for blocking unaccompanied minors in government custody from getting abortions, wrote in an essay 15 years ago as a Catholic University law school student that the similarities between abortion and the Holocaust are “crystal clear.”
{mosads}
“The Jews who died in the Holocaust had a chance to laugh, play, sing, dance, learn, and love each other. The victims of abortion do not, simply because people have decided this is the way it should be, not through any proper discernment of their humanity,” Lloyd reportedly wrote in the 2004 essay. Lloyd was a first-year law student at the time.
“Neither type of murder is more or less tragic, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that they are not both tragedies, and they are not both murder,” wrote Lloyd, who is now the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
An HHS spokesperson did not deny the accuracy of the report in a statement to The Hill.
“Mr. Lloyd has testified publicly to his personal and religious beliefs regarding abortion, and explained he does not let his religion guide his job as ORR director,” the spokesperson said.
“Mr. Lloyd is committed to the mission of the agency, and his concern and compassion for those who come into the care of ORR.”
Lloyd has attracted criticism from Congressional Democrats and abortion rights groups for his involvement in blocking unaccompanied minors in HHS custody from getting abortions.
ORR cares for undocumented minors who enter the country without their parents.
While previous administrations allowed these minors to obtain abortions, Lloyd routinely blocked this from happening, prompting lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Between March and Dec. 19 of last year, Lloyd denied seven requests for abortions, according to depositions of Lloyd released by the ACLU in February.
A federal judge has since ruled that HHS must allow minors to obtain abortions if they request one.
Anti-abortion groups have supported Lloyd’s approach, arguing that the U.S. should not be a “sanctuary nation” for abortion.
According to Mother Jones, Lloyd has a personal connection to abortion. A woman with whom Lloyd had sexual relations received an abortion despite his objections.
“The truth about abortion is that my first child is dead, and no woman, man, Supreme Court, or government — NOBODY — has the right to tell me that she doesn’t belong here,” Lloyd reportedly wrote in the paper.
Lloyd also wrote that he believes Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide, was wrongly decided by the high court.
“By making the choice to have sex, a woman is making a conscious decision to engage in an act that has the natural result of creating a pregnancy,” Lloyd wrote.
“A pregnancy implicates the rights of two other people — the baby, and the father, whether our government wants to recognize that or not.”