A Kentucky African American pro-life organization and a group of pastors have joined together to protest Planned Parenthood and what it says is the targeting of black women by the abortion business.
Sisters for Life president Angela Minter said during a press conference that – during Black History Month – America should remember the contributions made by members of the black community, but also “the forces that have oppressed and destroyed black lives – forces that are as pernicious and insidious as a slave master.”
“One of those forces is still alive and active today,” she said, as the Courier-Journal reports. “It is targeting the black community. They have placed over 80 percent of their surgical abortion mills in the inner city and minority neighborhoods. The age of eugenics inspired Hitler to launch the most evil campaign in human history.”
The group asserts that Planned Parenthood’s new clinic in downtown Louisville is on Seventh Street in a largely commercial area near the U.S. Post Office, a location Minter says is “in the heart of the black community.”
“Having abortions in our community and making it easily accessible, it undermines our community and it undermines the morals of our community,” Minter. “They’re parading themselves as an instrument of good but they are nothing more than a harborer of death and a destroyer of life.”
Minter likened pro-life activism to that of the civil rights movement.
“Abortion has become black genocide in this country,” she said. “We’ve documented the historical role Planned Parenthood has played in the destruction of black lives. Black lives do matter, and black lives matter in the womb.”
Sisters for Life and the pastors are holding a series of forums and documentary viewings in their communities and churches that will focus on the role Planned Parenthood has played in “the fracturing of the black community.”
“If Planned Parenthood truly cared about women, they would have never began abortion without having a transfer agreement,” Minter added, referring to the recent lawsuit filed against the abortion business by Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R).
Bevin asserts the organization performed abortions illegally without a license at its new location in Louisville. In addition, the governor said Planned Parenthood began performing abortions without a transfer agreement with a local hospital that would allow a woman who experienced complications during abortion to be transported to that hospital via ambulance.
Both the ACLU and the Guttmacher Institute – a research and policy institute that focuses on abortion – argued against the black pro-life group’s claim that Planned Parenthood targets black communities.
ACLU spokeswoman Amber Duke said the views of Sisters for Life about Planned Parenthood and abortion “rest on the flawed assumption that black women are somehow less capable of making the deeply personal decision about whether to end a pregnancy than other women.”
Speakers for Sisters for Life, however, said that abortion takes a disproportionate toll on black Americans, and assert it is more of a threat than gun violence, crime, car accidents or other causes of death.
The ACLU – using the narrative that abortion is “women’s healthcare” – said minority women are in need of access to the safe and affordable health care offered by Planned Parenthood.
“It is well-documented that black women, and other women of color, face many barriers accessing high-quality preventive and reproductive health care services,” Duke said. “Planned Parenthood is devoted to helping women of color overcome these barriers.”
The Guttmacher Institute admitted black women do obtain abortions at a higher rate than whites but said this outcome is due to the fact that black women are three times as likely as white women to have unintended pregnancies.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 40 percent of pregnancies among black women end in abortion. And in New York City – home of the headquarters of Planned Parenthood – more black babies are aborted than are born.
“The most dangerous place for a black man in America…is in his mother’s womb,” said Cecil A. Blye Jr., pastor of More Grace Ministries Church.
Minter said she herself survived an abortion her mother had at the urging of her father while she was pregnant with her.
Sisters for Life, says Minter, also conducts “sidewalk counseling” at Louisville’s other abortion clinic on West Market Street, hoping to encourage patients to seek other options besides abortion.
The group offers sex education that emphasizes abstinence and personal responsibility, and provides assistance to pregnant women.
On the defense following a series of videos exposing its apparent practice of selling the body parts of aborted babies on the open market, taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood has attempted to emphasize its other “services,” such as “life-saving breast cancer screenings.” Even its own recent annual report, however, indicates declines in those services.
Additionally, the American Cancer Society (ACS) no longer even recommends manual breast exams. As of October of 2015, the organization recommends only mammograms – which Planned Parenthood does not offer.
“Breast exams, either from a medical provider or self-exams, are no longer recommended,” ACS states. “Breast exams are no longer a part of the screening recommendations because research does not show they provide a clear benefit. Still, the American Cancer Society says all women should be familiar with how their breasts normally look and feel and report any changes to their health care provider right away.”
Nevertheless, abortion is essential to Planned Parenthood’s survival.
“The abortion part of Planned Parenthood is an important part of what we do,” its president Cecile Richards said last week.
Planned Parenthood was founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger who said black people are an inferior race that must be weeded out. Sanger launched The Negro Project in 1939 and worked to reduce the black population. Joining with elite and well-known African-Americans Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. DuBois, and Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., the Negro Project was sold as a solution to poverty and high birth rates among the black community. At the same time Sanger promoted her theory of “eliminating the unfit,” she also condemned charitable organizations that she believed were elevating the very population that needed to be weeded out.
Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a pastor and director of Civil Rights for the Unborn, said Monday, “On this last day of Black History Month, we reaffirm that, acting under the banner Civil Rights for the Unborn, we will clearly and forcefully continue to heighten awareness in the black community that civil rights begin when life begins.”
Planned Parenthood has vowed to spend millions of dollars to support Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Clinton is an avid champion of the abortion business.
Increasingly more Americans, however, are in favor of restrictions on abortion.
A recent Marist College Institute for Public Opinion poll found a full 81 percent of Americans favor some restrictions on abortion — including limiting the procedure after the first three months — and a continued ban on public funding of abortion.
In the survey of 1,700 Americans, even 66 percent of respondents who identify themselves as pro-choice say, “Abortion should be allowed, at most, in the first trimester, in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, or never permitted.”
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