Pro-life leaders who are also persons of color have come together to knock on the Supreme Court's door to have their voices heard over Roe v. Wade, which they believe is part of a eugenics movement that targets minority communites in the United States. The coalition of pro-lifers was led by the president of a Hispanic Christian organization and the late Martin Luther King Jr.'s very own niece.
According to Christian Headlines, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Dean Nelson of the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and leader of Speak for Life, came together as a coalition represented by Liberty Counsel, which submitted a friend-of-the-court brief detailing how abortion has been used as a "tool of the eugenics movement" in the past and that today, the abortion industry continues to target minority communities and women of color.
It is timely that the coalition of Hispanic Christians, Black pro-lifers and other minorities are speaking out, as the Supreme Court is set to hear a case on a Mississippi law that criminalizes abortion after 15 weeks. The controversial law, which includes exceptions for medical emergencies and fetal abnormality, is set to be heard this fall.
"Planned Parenthood-the largest abortion provider in the United States-has continued the legacy of its founder, Margaret Sanger, of eliminating or preventing unborn children based on race, sex, and disability," the brief drafted by Liberty Counsel representing the Hispanic Christians, Black pro-lifers, and minority groups argued. Sanger has long been known to be a racist eugenics advocate, which Planned Parenthood has since denounced and has tried to distance itself from.
But the coalition of Hispanic Christians, Black pro-lifers, and minority groups argue that states such as Mississippi have a "compelling interest 'in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics."
They also accused former Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher of having "endorsed abortion for eugenic reasons." The brief added that abortion has "devastated communities of color," citing a peer-reviewed study that revealed how "black women have been experiencing abortions at a rate nearly four times that of white women for more than 30 years."
In addition, the brief argues that about 8 out of 10 Planned Parenthood clinics are "within walking distance of predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods," citing this as proof to the Supreme Court that the abortion industry indeed targets minority neighborhoods and families or women of color.
In 2020, USA Today reported how Sanger "advanced a controversial 'Negro Project'" that "advocated for a eugenics approach to breeding for 'the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks-those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization."
After 100 years since its inception, Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry as a whole is facing major pushback, especially from Hispanic Christians, Black pro-lifers, and other minority groups that they have targeted since its inception in 1916. To overturn Roe v. Wade would be a victory for not just pro-lifers, but also these people of color who have been targeted for more than a century by an oppressive anti-life, anti-equality industry.
