Silent Protest 2017

One hundred years ago today, as Google pointed out, ten thousand Black men and women held a silent march in New York City. They marched in protest of the lynchings and violence heaped upon Blacks across America. The women wore white representing innocence and the men wore black, mourning the loss of lives and violence plaguing Blacks in America. While they did not chant or speak or sing, they did carry banners, two of which were prominently displayed: “Thou shalt Not Kill” and “Your Hands Are Full of Blood”. Slogans just as appropriate today as they were 100 years ago.

Since its founding in 1916 the Birth Control League, whose name changed to Planned Parenthood in the 1940s, has waged a birth and population control war against women of color. In doing so, their organization has created one of the greatest health care crises this nation has known. Black women ten or more years after their abortion decision find themselves in a fight for their lives battling breast cancer,  the second most common cause of cancer death among black women according to Sisters Network. When pregnant with their “planned” children, the ones they want, the CDC warns Black women may find themselves at greater risk for extreme premature birth, the kind most babies do not survive (27 weeks or less). Yet the CDC has not published the settled science information that reveals  previous induced abortions are a risk factor  for premature birth in subsequent pregnancies.

When visiting one of the Planned Parenthood surgical centers located within two miles of their homes, Black women are exposed to medical conditions that may result in infertility and death. Once inspected some of those facilities, like the Planned Parenthood in  St. Louis, are cited for failing to meet recognized medical standards including washing hands and sterilizing the instruments between procedures. Because of the stigma associated with abortion, most women do not feel free to discuss the botched abortion that left them with parts of the baby that had to be removed in a hospital emergency setting. Moreover, some have been killed in a Planned Parenthood center due to poor medical care such as Tonya Reaves who was left to bleed for more than five hours before emergency care was sought. Too little. Too late.

There is no way to measure the numbers of women whose uteri were perforated, bowels pulled out, or who experienced incomplete abortions. We cannot measure the numbers of those who found themselves infected with STDs, bacterial infections and the like because of their abortion decision. Those numbers are not reported nor are they collected. What is known is that thousands, if not millions of Black women have been injured, some psychologically and most physically since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

When states have dared to fight to regulate the abortion industry in the same manner that any other surgical facility is regulated, Planned Parenthood has fought tooth and nail to keep their facilities in squalid conditions. Citing a lack of access to women of color, as they did in the Hellerstedt v. Whole Women's Health case, they refused to raise their clinics to ambulatory surgical levels, and refused to meet requirements that doctors have admitting profiles in nearby hospitals.

It is time for another silent protest, first of the government (for refusing to defund Planned Parenthood) and second, Planned Parenthood who receives half a billion taxpayer dollars as they increase their abortion business that is increasingly hurting women of color. On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 join me in a silent protest. Ladies were white to commemorate the innocence and lives of the babies Planned Parenthood slaughters in their surgical centers. Men wear black to mourn the lives of the millions of Black babies and their mothers that have died at the hands of a Planned Parenthood abortionist. In every post on social media use the hashtag #endthegenocide

#YourHandsAreFullofBlood. 

From 12 noon to 1:00 pm EST  do not speak, and let us use that hour to pray. First for the babies, then for their mothers, then for the families that abortion has injured. Let us pray for an end to this scourge.