President John F. Kennedy, 1961 Inaugural Address
In 1961, many Blacks embraced the idea of passing the torch to a new generation – an idea that embodies responsibility, discernment and courage. President Kennedy defined this birthright as one built on strength, discipline and sometimes bitterness. What appropriate verbs for articulating the black experience in America – a legacy that should not be squandered or easily vanquished by the political expressions of the day. Yet, Star Jones, Nia Long and all the black women Keli Goff of the Root describe as “…Saving Planned Parenthood” have done exactly that – they have spit on the legacy of generations of black women instead favoring the politics of abortion over the lives of millions of blacks that have died in Planned Parenthood’s abortion centers.
Strong words, yes. Betrayal, yes. The cost of the betrayal: the lives and reproductive health of women who have believed and will believe Planned Parenthoods’ dogma because those spouting it are respected actresses, journalists, political leaders or entertainers. I cannot believe that any of these women looked past the rhetoric Planned Parenthood, has fed them to determine the truth of why Planned Parenthood centers are closing. It is not because they are suppliers of health care to women. The reality is that they are contributors to some of the very health issues many women and black children are facing such as breast cancer, bacterial and sexually transmitted infection, extreme premature births and infertility among other injuries including death.
To this day I remain haunted by the death of Tonya Reaves, a vibrant young twenty four year old that Planned Parenthood in Chicago left bleeding for more than five hours after a failed abortion during her fifth month of pregnancy. She did not have to die. But Planned Parenthood has so little regard for life that they left her there for more than five hours, unable to help herself as her life’s blood drained from her body. I am incensed by their rhetoric that this is a matter of access to contraception! No this is a population control agency continuing its objective to control the population we “don’t want too many of”, as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed in her 2009 New York Times interview. Tonya was one such victim of Planned Parenthood’s population control agenda.
The Root, carelessly continues the lie that black women lack “access to contraception” calling it “one of the key predictors for escaping poverty”. Since 79% of Planned Parenthood’s surgical facilities are located within a two mile walking radius of a Black or Latino neighborhood (see this study: http://www.protectingblacklife.org/pp_targets/index.html)one would think there would be far less Black and Latino women in poverty in these very same neighborhoods. After all, they tell us “When it comes to women’s health, they are the first line of defense for most lower-income women in America". This misinformation turns a blind eye to the fact that Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the nation. Instead they disguise this truth in the propaganda that "abortion accounts for less than 10% of their services".
The Planned Parenthood centers that are closing, are closing because the so call doctors in those facilities render such poor care, they cannot get admitting privileges to nearby hospitals and/or because they refuse to raise the facilities to ambulatory surgical center standards. Like Philadelphia’s Kermit Gosnell, they subject women to a myriad of horrors in the name of unfettered abortion rights. Most of these butchers are not held accountable for the poor services they render. In fact in most states while they may occasionally face disciplinary action, they are allowed time and again to go back to business as usual of butchering women. They want Black women to continue seeking this Gosnellian treatment because they refuse to raise their abortion centers to reasonable standards of medical care.
Not all Black women have drunk Planned Parenthoods' poison. Some of us get it. We stand as the dam, blocking the "undoing of human rights" of Black women and black babies and will continue to do so until the scourge is removed from our community.
