{"id":176248,"date":"2018-02-06T09:30:44","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T14:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=176248"},"modified":"2020-01-03T17:28:09","modified_gmt":"2020-01-03T23:28:09","slug":"black-pro-life-women-abortion-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/black-pro-life-women-abortion-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet four Black women who condemned abortion, calling it ‘Black genocide’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the early 1960s and 70s, organizations seeking to liberalize abortion laws, like the National Organization for Women (NOW), attempted to convince the nation that women wanted legalized abortion on demand. Many women actually opposed liberalized abortion laws, and those women’s voices were silenced by NOW (who was influenced by men seeking to profit from abortion) and NOW’s friends in the (at that time, majority male-led) media.<\/p>\n

During that time, many pro-life women spoke out against the liberalization of abortion laws, including many women in the Black community, who saw abortion as “Black genocide.” Four of them are listed below:<\/p>\n

Fannie Lou Hamer\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hamer was a\u00a0civil rights activist who helped to found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In 1964, she\u00a0ran for Congress<\/a>. Hamer was also a\u00a0victim<\/a>\u00a0of eugenic sterilization, a\u00a0program<\/a>\u00a0which Planned Parenthood\u2019s\u00a0founder<\/a>\u00a0(as well as those on her board) advocated.<\/p>\n

\"Fannie

Fannie Lou Hamer<\/p><\/div>\n

Ethyl Payne\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Hamer called abortion \u201cblack genocide,\u201d writing in The Afro-American, \u201cShe was a delegate to the White House Conference on Food and Nutrition\u2026. There she spoke out strongly of abortion as a means of genocide of blacks\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journalist Samuel Yette also noted Mrs. Hamer\u2019s views in\u00a0<\/strong>The Afro American \u2013 Apr 2, 1977<\/a>, quoting her as saying, \u201cIt is still a society in which an injured man must show his ability to pay before getting hospital services,\u00a0<\/strong>but his daughter or wife can be aborted or fed birth control pills, at public expense\u2026.\u201d Yette then recounted how Hamer blasted conference organizers: \u201cShe responded with shock and outrage at the deception. ‘I didn\u2019t come to talk about birth control,’ she protested. ‘I came here to get some food to feed poor, hungry people. Where are they carrying on that kind of talk?'”<\/p>\n

A 1969 article published by the Free-Lance Star quotes Hamer as\u00a0denouncing<\/a>\u00a0voluntary abortion as \u201clegalized murder,\u201d saying she \u201cmade it clear that she ‘regards it part of a comprehensive white man\u2019s plot to exterminate the black population of the United States.'”<\/p>\n

Author\u00a0Kay Mills quoted Hamer in her\u00a0book<\/a>\u00a0as saying, \u201cOnce Black women were bought as slaves because they were good breeders. Now they talk about birth control and abortion for blacks. If they\u2019d been talking that way when my mother was bearing children, I wouldn\u2019t be here now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Mildred F. Jefferson<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Mildred

Mildred Jefferson (Image: Schlesinger Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

Dr. Mildred Jefferson\u00a0was\u00a0the first Black woman to graduate<\/a> from Harvard Medical School and\u00a0the first woman employed as a general surgeon at Boston University Medical Center. She was ardently pro-life, and was the co-founder of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and Massachusetts Citizens for Life. She served as NRLC\u00a0president<\/a> from 1975-1978.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jefferson was committed to defending human life from, as she described<\/a> it, “conception to natural death.”<\/p>\n

She first became active in 1970 when, as she recalled<\/a> to the New York Times, “the American Medical Association first considered bending its founding principles in such a way that a doctor would not be considered unethical” if he or she committed an abortion.<\/p>\n

She\u00a0once<\/a>\u00a0described why she became a physician, “I became a physician in order to help save lives. I am at once a physician, a citizen, and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow the concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged, and the planned have the right to live.”<\/p>\n