Cardinal: Abortion as bad as Nazi eugenics

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has said Britain's policy on abortion is similar to Nazi Germany's eugenics experiments and killings.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has said Britain's policy on abortion is similar to Nazi Germany's eugenics experiments and killings.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales also said yesterday that he was right to turn the issue into a political debate ahead of the general election.

A "majority of the British people" agreed with his views and were uneasy with the law on abortion, the Cardinal said. In an article in The Sunday Telegraph, he said abortion meant "the terrible truth is that it is the strong who decide the fate of the weak; human beings therefore become instruments in the hands of other human beings. That way lies eugenics, and we know from German history where that leads."

Jewish groups were angered by the Cardinal's attempts to link the abortion issue with the Holocaust. Rabbi Jonathan Romain, a spokesman for the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, said: "I strongly disagree with the Cardinal."