Black Leaders to Planned Parenthood CEO: Will You Fight Racism that Targets Black Lives in the Womb?

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Dr. Susan Berry

A coalition of black leaders wrote to the CEO of Planned Parenthood to urge her “to confront the systemic racism of America’s abortion practices” and to “renounce the racist legacy” of her organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger.

According to Rev. Dean Nelson, executive director of Human Coalition Action, which organized the letter, at least 120 black leaders joined together Monday in calling upon Planned Parenthood to end its “ongoing systemic targeting of Black people.”

The leaders wrote to Alexis McGill Johnson:

We are a diverse coalition of Black leaders fighting for the dignity of all human life. Like you, we feel called to action by America’s collective reckoning with its history of racism and unjust violence against Black lives. We affirm, with you, that Black lives matter and that every human being, regardless of race or ethnicity, deserves equal respect, equal rights, and equal dignity.

That’s why we’re writing to you today. We are asking you to use your position at Planned Parenthood to confront the systemic racism of America’s abortion practices and to publicly renounce the racist legacy of your founder, Margaret Sanger.

The black leaders continued to Johnson that Planned Parenthood has provided vocal support for the Black Lives Matter movement and has acknowledged the existence of racism experienced by employees within its own organization.

“But Ms. Johnson, will you confront the iniquity that your abortion practices perpetrated against Black lives?” the signers asked. “Will you fight the racism that targets Black lives in the womb?”

The leaders observed the racial disparities that exist in abortions performed, and that black women represent 36 percent of all abortions.

“Black women are five times more likely than white women to receive an abortion,” they added. “In some cities, like New York, more Black children are aborted every year than are born alive.”

“This is no accident,” they told Johnson, as they observed her organization’s surgical clinics “target minority communities for abortion” throughout the country.

“In fact, 79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are located in or near communities of color,” they challenged. “Can Planned Parenthood really claim to care for Black lives while remaining complicit in the targeting of Black pregnant women?”

Referring to these statistics as a “massive iniquity,” the black leaders also asserted to Johnson that they are in keeping with “the racist, eugenicist vision” of Margaret Sanger, the founder of her organization.

The letter challenged Johnson to take note that, as employees of Planned Parenthood have recently accused her organization of racist practices and a toxic culture, the black leaders are not surprised by this unrest, “considering the organization’s founding beliefs about minority and vulnerable populations.”

“Ms. Johnson, your words about the Black Lives Matter movement ring hollow while your organization perpetuates this racist legacy,” the coalition asserted. “While Planned Parenthood of Greater New York and North Central States has disavowed Sanger’s eugenic views, Planned Parenthood National has remained silent.”

However, Planned Parenthood denies it is targeting black communities for abortions. Instead, the organization, which profits from abortion, continues its “reproductive justice” narrative that states low-income black women deserve free abortions, and to deny them taxpayer-funded abortions is “racist.”

Among the letter’s signers are Dr. Alveda King, former NFL star Ben Watson, Texas State Rep. James White (R), Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill (R), Georgia State Rep. Mack Jackson (D), Louisiana State Sen. Katrina Jackson (D), Rev. Bill and Deborah Owens of the Coalition of African American Pastors, former Professor Dr. Carol Swain, Family Research Council Senior Fellow Kenneth Blackwell, and political strategist Justin Giboney.

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