“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
Planned Parenthood Has ‘Racist Agenda,’ MLK’s Niece Says
By Josiah Ryan
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
April 17, 2008
(CNSNews.com) - The niece of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is among a group of pro-life black leaders calling for an end to federal funding for Planned Parenthood because of what she calls Planned Parenthood’s “racist agenda.”
“Planned Parenthood is definitely a racist organization - they have a racist agenda,” Dr. Alveda King told Cybercast News Service. “Since 1970, there has been something like 50 million abortions. About 17 million of those have been blacks. It’s black genocide. They are killing our people and fooling us.”
Last year, The Advocate, a student publication at the University of California - Los Angeles, placed phone calls to Planned Parenthood offices around the country offering to make donations specifically to subsidize the abortion of black babies.
The publication then posted videos on YouTube using audio recordings of calls on which
Planned Parenthood officials agreed to accept race-targeted donations. Planned Parenthood officials issued an apology, stating it was not their policy to accept race-targeted donations for abortions.
In March, the National Black Pro-Life Union sent letters to the Planned Parenthood Federation
of America, NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Congressional Black Caucus and Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.).
The letters call on these groups and Fattah to support the termination of federal funding of Planned Parenthood, which currently exceeds $300 million a year.
The National Black Pro-Life Union is a coalition of 15 African-American organizations that includes the Coalition of African-American Pastors, High Impact Leadership Coalition, and King
for America, which is led by King.
According to the National Black Pro-Life Union, none of the groups contacted have responded
to the letters.
King, who is also a pastoral associate for the conservative pro-life group Priests for Life,
said she was partially motivated to join the campaign to terminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood because in the early 1970s she was fooled into getting an abortion by a Planned Parenthood office that told her that her baby was “just a blob” of tissue.
“There are more Planned Parenthood clinics in black neighborhoods, because there is an
artificial demand, which was created by Planned Parenthood,” King told Cybercast News Service. “We were told by Planned Parenthood that abortion, which is actually murder, is therapeutic.”
The Planned Parenthood Federation did not respond to Cybercast News Service’s multiple requests for comment.
“It’s very difficult for them to understand that we are part of one race - the human race - and racism is just fighting among ourselves,” said King. “Congress needs to defund Planned Parenthood for participating in this agenda right away.”
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Pastors Accuse Planned Parenthood for ‘Genocide’ on Blacks
Thursday, April 24, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has perpetuated a “genocide on the black community,” says a group of African-American pastors who claimed Thursday the birth control and abortion provider has had a racist agenda since its beginnings in 1921.
Holding a brief vigil and press conference in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Washington,
D.C., the group of pastors and activists said they were incensed by the results of recent “undercover” inquiries into several Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.
“Every day … over 1,500 black babies are murdered inside the black woman’s womb,” said Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, of Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND). “This is a race issue.”
The pastors urged Congress to initiate an audit of the organization and have written letters demand-ing that money for Planned Parenthood be eliminated from federal Title X funding, of which the group got $65 million for fiscal year 2007, according to pro-life Concerned Women of America. In total, Planned Parenthood received $300 million in government contracts and grants in the current fiscal year.
The national office of Planned Parenthood provided FOX News with a lengthy statement on Thursday in which it said its role in the African-American community is widespread because the need is greater.
“The (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) revealed that a shocking number of teenage African -American girls — nearly half — carry a sexually transmitted infection,” reads the statement. “This compares to an overall average rate for all teenage girls of at least one in four.
“The largest increases in the teen birthrate were reported for non-Hispanic black teens, whose over-all rate rose five percent in 2006. In addition, African-American women are more likely to die of breast cancer than the general population,” it said.
But an investigation, undertaken by students at the University of California at Los Angeles news-paper, The Advocate, revealed troubling responses from Planned Parenthood staffers when asked by an actor, posing as a “donor,” if he could earmark his contribution for abortions for “black babies” only.
In one example, Autumn Kersey, vice president for marketing at Planned Parenthood of Idaho, is asked whether a donation can be specified “to help a minority group … like the black community, for example.”
“Certainly,” Kersey says in a taped response in which she sounds genuinely encouraged by the offer. “If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure the gift as earmarked for that purpose.”
The caller responds: “Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t
want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his
name.”
Kersey responds, “Absolutely.” The “donor” proceeds to proclaim that “the less black kids out there the better,” followed by, “understandable, understandable,” by Kersey, who laughed as if he were joking.
“Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time that I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of
request, so I’m excited and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out,” she is recorded saying.
Kersey’s and other statements were culled from calls to Planned Parenthood clinics in six states.
In each, the staff person answering the call expressed an interest in taking the donations despite the caller’s overtly racist commentary.
That is part of a troubling trend, say critics, who accuse Planned Parenthood of targeting minority neighborhoods. They blame the institution for a disproportionate rate of abortions among black women.
“I think the media, and I think America, and certainly black folks, need to start thinking about
race and Planned Parenthood, said Rev. Clenard Childress, who raised the question, not for the first time, about Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, who died over 40 years ago at the age of 86.
Sanger, a pioneering advocate for universal access to birth control for women, was also a proponent of “eugenics,” a philosophy that advocates social intervention, like birth control and abortion, for “improving” the hereditary traits of the human race. According to biographies written about Sanger, who was the sixth child of 11 eleven born to a family in upstate New York, her support for this practice was focused on the “unfit” and the poor — slum dwellers — as they were called at the time, by making contraceptives more available there.
Over the years, comments made by Sanger about reproduction among the poor and minorities have led to her reputation as a racist and a belief that she wanted to “weed” out blacks from society. Planned Parenthood has disputed that caricature and has pointed out her supporters in the black community, including Martin Luther King Jr., and W.E.B DuBois. Nevertheless, Childress and others repeatedly invoked her name as a major force behind a century-long “genocide” on the black community.
According to a report released by the group of Students for Life America on Tuesday, black women are 4.8 times more likely to have an abortion than white women, while the black population in the U.S. is in decline. Black women account for 36 percent of those having abortions in the U.S. today, according to group, while black children make up 17 percent of live births.
“Contrary to the public’s belief that Planned Parenthood is helpful and supportive of family
planning and the health of the mother and child, recent news and research show that the roots of its foundation have continued to give birth to continual hatred and disdain for minorities that its founder saw as ‘unfit,’” the group says in its report.