More Active Posts
Front Page
Abortion a “civil rights crisis”
 |
 15 Comments |
Calling African-American abortion a “civil rights crisis,” the Issues4Life Foundation is hosting events in the Bay Area throughout January to inform, strengthen and unite African American leaders on the abortion issue.
According to Issues4Life founder Walter Hoye, abortion claims more than 1400 lives a day and has surpassed all other causes of death combined to become the number one killer of African Americans today (15 million since 1973).
“With numbers like that we’re looking at the Darfur or Rawanda situation,” Hoye told WoW. “When you hear terms like genocide, they aren’t being used to generate a response. We’re below the replacement level. That is the definition of genocide.”
Rev. Amos Lee, president of the San Francisco NAACP, told the SF Chronicle that abortion is not a civil-rights issue and the black community does not overwhelmingly support pro-life advocates. The Macon, Ga., NAACP chapter has twice proposed pro-life resolutions that the parent organization has rejected.
African Americans are not the only community discussing abortion. The LA Times recently reported that men, long excluded from the abortion debate, are increasingly seeking support to deal with the emotional trauma of terminated pregnancies.
Vicki Thorn, founder of the National Office of Post-abortion Reconciliation and Healing, recently hosted a conference in San Francisco equipping health care professionals and clergy members to counsel men who have experienced abortion.
“The men are hidden and aren’t going to do groups for the most part. It’s not the way they grieve,” Thorn told WoW. “Men don’t want to sit around and talk about feelings.”
Online discussion threads about the Times article called post-abortive male-outreach efforts mere pro-life propaganda, but Thorn insists that her objectives aren’t political or polemical.
“We know grief when we have it,” Thorn said. “As Christians, faith-based communities, and mental health professionals, we cannot dismiss someone‘s lived experience on the basis of our political ideology.”
 |
Topic: Editors Choice, Front Page, The Nation |  |
Email a friend |
 |
Keywords: abortion, Issues4Life, NAACP, Walter Hoye |  |
RSS 2.0 |
 |
Both comments and pings are currently closed. |  |
Share this: |
Schizo
Well, I guess the “abortion is murder” thing didn’t work out too well. (In fact, Michael Martin recently said on another thread that killing babies is the kind and decent thing to do, since they’re spared a life of suffering.) Nor did calling abortion a “human rights crisis.” And don’t even get me started on prayer…But I’m sure that appealing to black people with a bunch of civil rights nonsense will be the tactic that finally defeats abortion.
Right.
Back when I was an evvie, I attended more than a few pro-life events, protests, etc. In one of America’s biggest cities. And in all those events over several years, out of the thousands of pro-life activists I encountered, probably not even 10 of them were black. Black women get abortions at 3 times the rate of white women. Black people support the party which officially endorses abortion on demand by a 9 to 1 margin. Everyone says that blacks are more conservative than whites when it comes to abortion, but that’s a lie. Abortion is not something a lot of blacks are all that upset about. If they were, they wouldn’t abort their babies at three times the rate of whites, and they wouldn’t support the pro-abort party 9-1. So making abortion a black “civil rights” issue should really do the trick. Well, that and prayer.
Try this again! What is wrong with WoW’s comment system?
Well, I guess the “abortion is murder” thing didn’t work out too well. (In fact, Michael Martin recently said on another thread that killing babies is the kind and decent thing to do, since they’re spared a life of suffering.) Nor did calling abortion a “human rights crisis.” And don’t even get me started on prayer…But I’m sure that appealing to black people with a bunch of civil rights nonsense will be the tactic that finally defeats abortion.
Right.
Back when I was an evvie, I attended more than a few pro-life events, protests, etc. In one of America’s biggest cities. And in all those events over several years, out of the thousands of pro-life activists I encountered, probably not even 10 of them were black. Black women get abortions at 3 times the rate of white women. Black people support the party which officially endorses abortion on demand by a 9 to 1 margin. Everyone says that blacks are more conservative than whites when it comes to abortion, but that’s a lie. Abortion is not something a lot of blacks are all that upset about. If they were, they wouldn’t abort their babies at three times the rate of whites, and they wouldn’t support the pro-abort party 9-1. So making abortion a black “civil rights” issue should
Black women get abortions at three times the rate of white women.
Blacks support the party that is officially pro-abortion by a margin of 9 to 1.
In my years of pro-life activism, I encountered thousands of other pro-life activists. Probably less than ten were black.
Yeah, this should work.
Actually, if you click on the first link, it says that black women get abortions at almost four times the rate of white women. But the article also says that the big kickoff event will have Martin Luther King’s niece as featured participant. That should really bring out the masses.
I’m pretty sure the three kickoff events will be flops, as will the movement to enlist black in the pro-life movement by painting it as a civil rights issue.
I won’t be as cynical. Maybe it will open some eyes, and if it saves even one child, it’s worth it. It might be the thing that makes the community that overwhelming supports the Dems finally open their eyes to the fact that Dems don’t care really care about them, just their vote. Perhaps this is why they are deserting Hillary for Barack.
Sure. They’re deserting pro partial birth abortion Hillary for pro partial birth abortion Obama, not because he’s black, but because they realize that pro abortion white Dems don’t care about the sanctity of black life, while pro abortion black Dems do. Makes sense to me.
And, just like the cities that are using prayer to fight crime, I’ll ask WoW to revisit this topic in a year, 3 years, 5 years, etc. We’ll see what impact it’s had then, It will be zero.
Count me in as one of the cynical people.
If black Americans knew the true story of Margaret Sanger (she founded Planned Parenthood and was an avid supporter of the Nazis extermination of Down Syndrome and other “defective” kids) they’d recognize PPFA as the unmitigated evil it truly is.
I wonder how many predominantly black churches sponsor or publicize unwed mothers’ homes or CPCs? Is the genocide done to unborn blacks even on the black churches’ radar screen?
Whither Bishop TD Jakes, Creflo and Taffi Dollar et al?
AWOL or MIA in the Culture War??
On a related note, I read in wikipedia that old Reaganite David Stockman (who spent his Viet Nam years at a Divinity School) is a board member of a proAbort Abortion group
I wasn’t limiting the desertion to the one issue of abortion, Night Train. I should have been more clear and said that. Black Americans have to figure out a lot of things and change a lot of things that the rest of us just can’t do for them.
Not only should black Americans learn more about Margaret Sanger, so should everyone learn that history. Hitler carried out the goals of the eugenics movement in his country to excess, but there was a eugenics movement in this country and an effort to sterilize people here, too. But our mainstream media doesn’t want that out there. If the truth gets out there to one person through this effort, more power to it, no matter the color who is listening.
On the other hand, I just read a thread at the Volokh about Obama that disturbs me: that the minister of his church, someone Obama has said is his spiritual mentor — has essentially given Louis Farrakhan a “person of the year” award in a magazine published by the minister’s daughters. As someone noted there, we judge someone by the company he keeps. Apparently, Senator Obama doesn’t just keep company with Oprah.
Sanger opposed the Nazi’s. In a letter she wrote: “All the news from Germany is sad & horrible, and to me more dangerous than any other war going on any where because it has so many good people who applaud the atrocities & claim its right. The sudden antagonism in Germany against the Jews & the vitriolic hatred of them is spreading underground here & is far more dangerous than the aggressive policy of the Japanese in Manchuria..”
She was a supporter of Eugenics, which was not uncommon at the time. I will remind you that many states at the time had laws permitting (if not requiring) sterilization of the infirm or disabled. This of course reached its peak with the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, in which Justice Holmes infamously upheld Virginia’s forced sterilization of an allegedly (though not in fact) retarded girl writing “three generations of imbeciles is enough.” That, to me, ranks with Plessy v. Ferguson as one of the lowest moments in American legal history.
All of which is to say that Sanger was a flawed individual. But that does not in any way support the proposition that PPFA is an “unmitigated evil.” Whatever one may think of abortion, PPFA provides (non-abortion) health care that would otherwise be unavailable to many women and men.
I will say this — the civil rights issue here is not abortion — it’s the persistent poverty, poor educational opportunities, and cycles of violence that plague many black communities. Solve those problems and you’ll go a long way toward solving their disproportionate abortion rate.
Definitely something to point out, look at how you people talk.
“It might be the thing that makes the community that overwhelming supports the Dems finally open their eyes to the fact that Dems don’t care really care about them, just their vote.”
“as will the movement to enlist black in the pro-life movement by painting it as a civil rights issue.”
Is there a better way to demonstrate that white conservatives view the pro-life movement as a strategy for converting black people away from liberal economic positions?
My big critique of the National Right To Life? The NRTL is seen as mainly a Republican adjunct. I think that organization hurt its chances when it failed to keep seats on their Board of Directors for Democrats.
We erred when we decided to let the ProLife movemt become partisan. In that regard NRTL is as predictable in its endorsemts as are NAACP or AFLCIO.
Where does Rev Amos Lee or anyone else for that matter claim the right to be spokesmen for the “black community”??
Elites like him are free to create and champion whatever “crisis” they feel is needed. But dont ignore the opinions of real rank and file Americans (of any skin pigmt, Rev Lee!)
My big critique of the Democratic Party? The Dems are seem mainly as an abortuary adjunct. I think that organization hurt its chances when it failed to countenance prolife Dems. They errred when they decided to let the abortion question become partisan. In that regard, the Dems are as predictable in their endorsements as are NAACP or AFLCIO.