Last summer the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) passed a resolution condemning what it called “extremist elements within the Tea Party.” Stunningly, the national NAACP has never questioned the extreme practice of race-based abortions.
When given the chance to support a bill that would end the practice of race-based and gender-based abortions in the United States, the NAACP passed on the honor. In fact, it protested the bill.
On December 1, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) re-introduced the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act. The NAACP sided with over three dozen civil rights groups in opposing it.
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) explained that the group opposed the bill because Douglass, the abolitionist, and Anthony, the suffragist, were not leading pro-life advocates and are thus not intimately connected to the issue of race- and gender-based abortions. But on March 14, 1875, in her famous speech “Social Purity,” Anthony listed “abortions and infanticides” as part of a “monster evil of society.” And on October 22, 1883, Douglass said: “Only base men and oppressors can rejoice in a triumph of injustice over the weak and defenseless, for weakness ought itself to protect from assaults of pride, prejudice and power.”
But at least the NAACP is consistent. In 2004, it officially took a position favoring abortion, with then-Chairman Julian Bond saying the group was “pleased to join those insisting on a woman’s right to control her own body.” In July of 2007, the NAACP rejected a pro-life resolution introduced by its Macon, Georgia chapter. Lifesitenews.com described the resolution as seeking “to address the pressing issues of abortion and infant mortality in the African-American community.” And when Live Action uncovered Planned Parenthood clinics willingly accepting donations to help “lower the number of blacks in America” last year, the NAACP’s silence was deafening. That largely unreported scandal inspired Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) to introduce legislation to deny Title X funding to Planned Parenthood. Unsurprisingly, the NAACP sided with Planned Parenthood over Pence.
This past June, NAACP lobbyist Hilary Shelton condemned billboards in Atlanta, Georgia sponsored by a black pro-life group that read “Abortion Enslaves Us.” Shelton said the comparison “raises major concerns.” Yet NAACP president and CEO Ben Jealous says requiring an ID to vote is the same as Jim Crow?
It’s a bad sign when the NAACP, America’s oldest civil right group, finds itself on the same side of the abortion debate as Margaret Sanger. The NAACP’s leadership is putting political expediency and ideology before the interests of the people the organization supposedly represents. Why else would so-called advocates for the black community tacitly support the Holocaust of unborn black babies?
Jerome Hudson is a member of Project 21, a sponsorship of the National Center for Public Policy Research. His Twitter handle is @jeromeehudson and he can be reached at Jeromehudsonspeaks.com.
