Pro-life advocates have launched a new eyebrow-raising billboard in downtown Atlanta to bring attention to what they say are the pro-abortion views of many civil rights leaders.
According to the billboard’s sponsors, abortion in the black community kills more African-Americans than “all other causes combined.”
The ad hints at the groups’ primary charge — that civil rights leaders who support abortion are betraying the black community — and directs onlookers to visit AbortionInTheHood.com. This is the second round of anti-abortion billboards targeting Atlanta this summer.
“Something is wrong,” said Catherine Davis, founder of the Restoration Project, a co-sponsor of the billboard, “when those elected to protect the interests of their constituents turn a blind eye to the horrific impact that abortion is wreaking on the black community. In New York City, for every 1,000 black babies born alive, 1,489 are aborted. In Washington, D.C. for every 100 black babies born alive, 165 are aborted! Something is wrong!”
Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-life Union, another co-sponsor, added that there is an element of racism, which civil rights leaders should fight, among abortion providers.
“Can’t we at least ask the hard questions about these numbers?” Gardner said. “Pro-abortion groups cry racism when black pro-life leaders point out the depopulation effect of abortion. I say yes racism is a factor, not on the part of pro-lifers, but on the part of those who want us to continually stream into the clinics to kill our children. All black leaders should help stop it or stay home.”
The website the billboard advertises features an anti-abortion video with heavy music, striking images and serious charges.
“Tragically deaths outnumber life in the black community, out of 653,071 annual deaths, the most common cause is not HIV (6,398), respiratory disease (7,830), homicide (8,870), diabetes (12,343), accidents (13,559), kidney disease (17,323), cancer (63,441), or heart disease (95,059),” according to the video.
See the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqeUlAmUXb4According to the video, abortion takes 363,705 African-American lives annually, while 289,366 die from all other causes combined.
Planned Parenthood Southeast is not happy about this onslaught of anti-abortion advocacy.
“The sponsors of these billboards want to deny women the ability to make important private personal medical decisions, and they are using race as a wedge issue to accomplish this goal. This is a reprehensible tactic,” Leola Reis, vice president of external affairs with Planned Parenthood Southeast told The Daily Caller in a statement. “What Planned Parenthood knows is that women of every background take health decisions very seriously, and they make deeply personal medical decisions based on the advice of doctors and in consultation with loved ones and others they trust.”
Alveda King of Priests for Life, another billboard co-sponsor, remains unconvinced. She says Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, was a proponent of eugenics.
“It’s outrageous that Margaret Sanger’s Negro Project to control the birth rate of blacks is alive and thriving today because so many black leaders have sold their constituents the lie that abortion is the key to emancipating African-American women,” said King. “Abortion kills babies and hurts women and families. These pro-abortion voices are not the voices of black America.”
Planned Parenthood pointed out to The Daily Caller, however, that the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit sexual health research organization, published a study in January, which showed that – based on census data- fewer than one in 10 abortion facilities are located in majority black neighborhoods.
Despite charges of racism on the part of abortion facilities, Professor R. L’Heureux Lewis, assistant professor of sociology and black studies at the City College of New York and a pro-choice advocate, told BET that it is activists like the billboard’s sponsors who are the ones engaged in racism.
“I think that this continues a long trend of anti-choice advocacy toward African-American communities,” Lewis told BET.com. “By using public figures like [Rev. Jesse] Jackson or others they are trying to argue that blacks are trying to kill themselves and that black leaders are at the head of it, but the ultimate goal is to limit black women and what they can do with their bodies.”