During a House floor debate on a bill to further restrict abortion in Kentucky on Wednesday, Republican Rep. Danny Bentley made false claims about Jewish people and the Holocaust, including claiming that an abortion-inducing pill was derived from the same poison gas used to kill millions of Jews.
The untrue statements from Bentley, a pharmacist from Russell, came just a week after two Kentucky lawmakers used anti-Semitic slurs during a legislative committee meeting. Rep. Walker Thomas, R-Hopkinsville and Sen. Rick Girdler, R-Somerset, both used the phrase "Jew them down" in reference to bargaining for a lower price on a lease. Both apologized last week through a spokesperson after being presented with their words.
Bentley's comments and the slurs from Girdler and Thomas bookended yet another anti-Semitic email that was sent to lawmakers late last week. On Monday, House Speaker David Osborne and Minority Floor Leader Joni Jenkins said in a joint statement that the email was "as false as it was disgusting."
Leadership denounced the obscenity, and said they are working to "ensure that legislators and staff alike are much less likely to see this type of bigotry. Kentucky was the first state to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism, and a core component of that resolution is denouncing hatred whenever and wherever it happens. This is one of those times."
During the Wednesday afternoon debate on House Bill 3, a far-reaching anti-abortion bill that opponents say will all but eliminate access to the medical procedure in the commonwealth, Bentley began commenting on the sexual habits of Jewish women, before launching into talk of the Holocaust.
These comments were spurred by the filing of a floor amendment to HB3 by Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, D-Louisville, asking that people of the Jewish faith be exempt from the bill's application because the religion teaches that life does not begin at conception.
"Since we brought up the Hebrew family today," Bentley said, "Did you know that a Jewish woman has less cancer of the cervix than than any other race in this country or this world. Why is that? Because Jewish women only have one sex partner. They don't have multiple sex partners. To say that the Jewish people approve of this drug now is wrong."
Bentley also said that RU-486, or Mifepristone, one of two pills prescribed to induce an abortion, was invented by a Jew during World War II called Zyklon B, and used as the cyanide gas to "kill millions of Jews during the Holocaust."
"That's the same thing this cyanide gas was used for, which killed millions of Jews during the Holocaust. That's where RU-486 started," said Bentley. The same company that manufactures RU-486, he said, is "working to develop a more effective product. Why would they do it? Because they're making money on it."
The Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass in Lexington called Bentley's remarks a "bizarre, anti-Semitic rant that included outlandish claims about the sex lives of Jewish women and the outrageous assertion that Jews created the 'abortion pill' during the Holocaust to profit financially."
Bentley apologized for his remarks Wednesday night, saying, "I meant absolutely no harm in my comments today and sincerely apologize for any they caused. Last week we received a heartbreakingly sad reminder that anti-Semitism still exists in our society, and I apologize if my comments today caused similar pain or any doubt that I stand with the Jewish community against hatred."
In his apology, Bentley said, "My intention was to speak as a pharmacist to the history of RU-486, and respond to the proposed amendment. I clearly should have been more sensitive with my comments."
Bentley's remarks were quickly condemned by members of the Jewish community, including Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, Kentucky's only Jewish lawmaker. She told the Courier-Journal that the "first clinical trials of this drug has nothing to do with World War II, and has nothing to do with the Holocaust. That the developer was indeed of Jewish descent, what difference does that make?"
Bentley was referring to Etienne-Emile Baulieu, a lead researcher of the drug in the early 1980s, according to The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which also reported on Bentley's remarks, debunking several of his claims. Baulieu is now 95, and changed his name from Blume when he fought in the French resistance.
"Bentley appeared to be conflating multiple narratives, and Jews," The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. "A German-Jewish scientist, Fritz Haber, helped develop the cyanide gas, Zyklon B, in the early part of the 20th century as an insecticide. Haber, a Nobelist in chemistry, died in 1934, years before the Nazis used the gas to commit genocide."
RU-486 wasn't developed until the 1980s.
Bentley also referred to Baulieu's reported consideration for a Nobel prize in chemistry in 1989 for his work on RU-486, which was met with strong resistance from anti-abortion activists.
"And then they were getting ready to nominate him for the Nobel award," Bentley said. "But guess who else was getting the Nobel award? Mother Teresa. Quite an oxymoron." Mother Theresa received the Nobel prize in 1979, a decade earlier.
Bentley separately walked through the effect of abortion pills on the human body, and said the same thing happens to farm animals — "I know if I leave a little placenta in that mare, she's going to get gangrene," he said. "You're doing the same thing with these young females, or older females, what ever they are."
The Kentucky Jewish Council, in a statement, said they were "dismayed by the bizarre comments made on the KY House floor by [Bentley] about the Jewish people. The Holocaust has no place in an abortion debate, and borders on minimization. We've reached out to Rep. Bentley and hope he retracts his comments."
On Thursday morning Gov. Andy Beshear tweeted, "There is no place for anti-Semitism in Kentucky. Not in our communities and not in our government. We are all equal and wonderful parts of Team Kentucky where we love our neighbors as ourselves."
The Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass, joined by the American Jewish Committee, and the National Council of Jewish Women, Louisville Section, called on all "elected officials and community partners to forcefully denounce anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, especially when they emanate from officials elected to serve the people of the Commonwealth."
The groups then urged leadership of the Kentucky House and Senate to "accept our offer to provide anti-Semitism training to all members of the Kentucky General Assembly and their staff."
Senate GOP spokeswoman Angela Billings said Thursday morning that leadership plans to add cultural sensitivity training on anti-Semitism alongside other training that state senators already receive annually.
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(Herald-Leader writer Austin Horn contributed to this report.)
