This week in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr., we remember the accomplishments and heroics of the Civil Rights Movement, a movement dedicated to the equality of rights for African Americans and the struggle to fulfill the promises of our Constitution for all citizens. On Tuesday, March 22, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, hundreds of thousands of supporters will gather in the Washington Mall to commemorate another historical moment in the fight for civil rights: the 1973 Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade.
There is significance to the back-to-back placement of these days, one to honor a leader of African American civil rights, the other to fight against abortion, that cannot be ignored.
I believe that in order to fully remember and continue MLK Jr.'s message of equality for all, we must work to secure that right which is the basis of all civil rights: right to life.
Just as Americans were able to persuade themselves that it was morally acceptable to own another human being, Americans have persuaded themselves that it is acceptable to kill a human being before he or she is born. All of us can agree on the moment of death, the moment in which a person's heart stops beating and organs cease to function.
If we can all agree that life ends when the heart stops beating, why can't we agree that life is present when the heart starts beating? How can we deny that just because one is growing at an earlier stage it is not a person?
Is there a connection between racism, the cause Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated his shortened life to overcome, and abortion in the United States? Planned Parenthood is a pro-choice institution which provides information and affordable reproductive health care services such as abortions and birth control.
It was founded as the American Birth Control league by Margaret Sanger, a leader of America's movement for birth control and abortion which resulted in the legalization of the two. Margaret Sanger was an activist, a leader, and a feminist, but she was also a eugenicist and arguably a racist.
In her book The Pivot of Civilizations, Sanger calls for "the segregation of morons, misfits, and maladjusted," and the "sterilization of genetically inferior races." She believed that the key to engineering a better population lay in birth control and abortion. In her autobiography, she writes, "[We] sought first to stop the multiplication of the unfit. This appeared the most important and greatest step towards racial betterment."
And who might Sanger have had in mind when she speaks of the "unfit" and the "inferior races?"
Although no one can truly answer this, I would say that her 1938 idea for a "Negro Project" to promote birth control and abortion among Southern blacks might be taken into consideration.
Many people argue today that Planned Parenthood is a necessity in poor communities because it provides health care services for those who might not be able to afford them and advocates for any woman's right to an abortion.
But how can we ignore the original intent of the American Birth Control League and its founder, which sought to engineer a better population by controlling the reproductive rights of the "unfit"?
How can Planned Parenthood advocate for a woman's "right to choose" when its founder, Margaret Sanger, looked to curb the right to have children for Southern blacks.
Now I am not saying that pro-choice advocates and institutions such as Planned Parenthood are inherently racist.
What I am asking you to do is consider some facts.
Why did the Center for Disease Control's 2003 report on abortion statistics record that African Americans account for 12 percent of the population but 36 percent of the abortions in this country? Why did they find the abortion rate for African Americans three times higher than the abortion ratesof whites?
These are questions that no advocate for minority concerns can ignore.
I am writing this article in hope that this week some of you may look at the pro-life movement in a different light.
In the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., Tuesday's March for Life is about the voices of a minority opinion coming together against a perceived injustice and against the denials of a right. It is about securing that fundamental right to live, which is the basis of all civil rights.
It is about protecting a woman's freedom to choose to keep her child, regardless of her socio-economic or racial status and regardless of societal pressures which say that only the well-off should have children.
I write this article in hopes that you will remember Martin Luther King Jr.'s crusade against oppression and realize that racism has many forms. I am writing this article to remind you that the fight for rights and for lives must go on, especially for those unable to fight for themselves.
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