According to a six-page essay allegedly written in 2004, head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Scott Lloyd compared current abortion practices to the murders carried out during the Holocaust.
“The Jews who died in the Holocaust had a chance to laugh, play, sing, dance, learn, and love each other. The victims of abortion did not, simply because people have decided this is the way it should be, not through any proper discernment of their humanity,” Lloyd reportedly wrote.
“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.”
A report posted Wednesday by Mother Jones cites Lloyd’s own past experience with abortion as the reason for the essay.
“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.”
In the 2004 essay, Lloyd also allegedly stated that if a woman is going to have sex, she must be ready to have a child.
“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. A pregnancy implicates the rights of two other people — the baby, and the father, whether our government wants to recognize that or not.”
“A state would not be violating any rights by recognizing and codifying the natural consequence of a person’s action, protecting a fetus’s right to life, and protecting a father’s right to be a father,” Lloyd concluded.
A fellow classmate who is now practicing law in Texas recalled the essay as “unbelievable.”
“He’s become this sort of crusader toward overturning a woman’s right to choose — based on his experience with getting a girl pregnant. I was like, ‘I need to have a record of this,’” the classmate said.
However, in a statement addressing the reports the HHS said Lloyd has been clear about his religious leanings but does not let them influence his work.
“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.”
“Mr. Lloyd is committed to the mission of the agency, and his concern and compassion for those who come into the care of ORR,” the statement said.
Regarding his own abortion experience, Lloyd wrote that he had stupid reasons for going through with it and encouraging his partner to have it done.
“On the way there, I gave her the money, mostly in ones, for two reasons: 1) if I didn’t, I would be the enemy and she would stop listening to me and 2) because if she went through with it, I didn’t want to leave thinking it wasn’t my fault. Both were stupid reasons. In the parking lot we argued one last time.”
A fellow student who read the essay in 2004 told Mother Jones that they had never heard anyone write about such an experience before.
“The reason I remember it so clearly,” they said, was because “it was the first time I’d ever heard somebody say, ‘I got somebody pregnant or I was pregnant, and I got an abortion.’”
The essay also touches on Roe v. Wade and asks whether or not a society should get behind abortion in order help women find success.
“Roe v. Wade points to the mental and financial troubles a pregnant woman faces. It doesn’t speak highly of women to assume that they can’t handle the pressures of being a mother, and that they need a procedure that is so directly opposed to femininity,” Lloyd wrote.
“Ask any of the female deans or professors at our school how much abortion was a factor in their success as a female professional. Ask them if having a child spelled mental and financial ruin. I sort of doubt that abortion was a key step on their path to success.”
“Is abortion a choice we should endorse in an effort to make women a more successful segment of society?” He concluded.