This is one of the rare times that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day comes so close to the anniversary of Roe v. Wade (Jan. 22). The Desiring God Blog shares a post today entitled “MLK’s Dream and the Nightmare of Black Genocide.” In that post the following points are raised:
One in four African Americans conceived in the last forty years have been cut down by the “black genocide” of legal abortion.
A decade ago [Clenard] Childress founded a website by and for African Americans (blackgenocide.org) “to expose the disproportionate amount of Black babies destroyed by the abortion industry. For every two African American women that get pregnant, one will choose to abort.”
The site laments that “a Black baby is 5 times more likely to be killed in the womb than a White Baby.” Childress says, “The most dangerous place for an African American to be is in the womb of their African American mother.”
For Childress and a growing number, the point is clear: Abortion in America is a race issue….
Again, roughly one in four African Americans, who otherwise might be alive today, have been consumed in the holocaust of legal abortion. Because of the disproportionate number of Blacks who have been aborted, it’s difficult not to make the connection between King’s dream and the nightmare of abortion, and ask, Have not the last 40 years of Roe significantly undermined the cause that King so tirelessly gave himself to until 1968?
…As one Black man says in the 3801 Lancaster documentary, “Everything that was ever gained during the Civil Rights Movement is worth nothing to a dead Black child,” and as one Black woman proclaims, “Make no mistake, abortion is a civil rights issue.”
The article goes on to quote Dr. King’s niece on the severity of this problem, I encourage you to read the whole post by David Mathis on this MLK Day.
Let me be clear, I believe as Christians we should be concerned for both the rights of the black man and the unborn child. I am ashamed of how white America, and specifically white Christian America treated the blacks for so long. I uphold Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a true hero – standing up for the rights of his people and advocating non-violent tactics. He is a gift to our country and we should be proud to celebrate today in his honor. But I also believe we cannot be silent when it comes to abortion. Innocent lives are lost every day and all of us grow calloused by the frequency of the slaughter and blinded by the sanitary-ness of it all. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.
But when you see abortion as a civil rights issue, that the very structures which encourage and support abortion are heavily stacked in the favor of doing away with a 25% or more of unborn black children – then abortion should be come even more sinister. Add to this the fact that in other cultures around the world, girls are systematically aborted through fetal selection and the travesty becomes even more alarming.
May we pray today for our country to stop its schizophrenic attitude toward abortion. America is at the forefront of a revolution to protect life and extend it through a variety of avenues: social, scientific, medical, economic, political and militarily. America sacrifices and moves mountains just to save one trapped miner or rescue a displaced people group. Shouldn’t we be equally concerned with the rights of the unborn who are falling so quickly all around us?
What a sad anniversary
I find it problematic that in a post about abortion, the word “woman” is used only once, and then not in your own writing. You say that Christians should be concerned about the rights of black men and the rights of unborn children – what about the rights of black women – and all women?
Let me qualify by saying that I am pro-life. I do not want anyone to have an abortion unless bearing that child would threaten her own life. But I’m not convinced that banning abortion is a good policy decision.
What if, for every black child who is aborted, 2 or 3 other children can be fed and clothed? What if many of these women who choose abortion do so because they can barely provide for their families as-is and don’t know how they’ll manage to feed another mouth? What if there are meaningful economic reasons that women choose abortion?
If we are serious about the rights of unborn children, and believe we have the responsibility to uphold those rights, we must accept certain other responsibilities. We as a nation must be responsible for providing birth control to prevent unwanted children and paying for medical care, from the first prenatal visit until that child turns 18. We must be responsible for making sure that child is fed, clothed, and educated so that he or she can actually live in this world. And we as a nation are not ready to take on those responsibilities. I want a pro-life America, but not until America is willing to actually make sure that child continues to live and grow once he or she has left the womb.