More than 200 people gathered in downtown Albuquerque yesterday to denounce the tactics used by anti abortion rights groups recently.
The rally was held in response to an anti-abortion protest that took place earlier this month where advocates staged demonstrations in locations across the city, holding signs with pictures of bloody fetuses and messages comparing abortion in Albuquerque to the Jewish Holocaust.
Sarah Koplik is the director of outreach for the Jewish Federation of New Mexico. She says the comparison is extremely inappropriate and describes the groups' tactics as terrorizing to those who experience them. "There is no equivalency between genocide and abortion," she adds, "and this comparison is deeply offensive to the Jewish community."
But Tara Shaver, a spokeswoman for the local anti-abortion rights group Project Defending Life, defends the comparison, arguing that about 50 million abortions have been performed in the US since 1973.
Lately activists on both sides of the abortion debate have taken to the streets. Albuquerque voters will soon be tasked with deciding the fate of a city ballot initiative that would ban abortions after 20 weeks.