{"id":179061,"date":"2018-02-20T13:15:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T18:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=179061"},"modified":"2020-06-11T22:49:11","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T03:49:11","slug":"planned-parenthood-board-defund-racist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/planned-parenthood-board-defund-racist\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Planned Parenthood board member: Defund this ‘racist’ organization"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Dr. La Verne Tolbert is an accomplished professor, author and outspoken advocate for adoption and foster care. She is also a former Planned Parenthood board member turned staunch pro-life advocate who admits that at one time she hated children. Her journey to the truth led her to become a role model for children and an outspoken representative against the agenda of abortion and Planned Parenthood, which she says targets the Black community.<\/p>\n

\"Image:

Dr. Laverne Tolbert<\/p><\/div>\n

Early in her career, Tolbert, who then went by the name La Verne Powlis, landed a job as editor\/reporter for Family Circle Magazine and went on to become the first Black beauty editor of Brides Magazine, where she claims she lived a “very glamorous life in the beauty world.”\u00a0(In 1979, she authored her first beauty book and became a spokesperson<\/a> for L’Oreal.)<\/p>\n

\"Image:

La Verne Powlis: Beauty from the Inside Out<\/p><\/div>\n

“Why is it more necessary for women in the inner city to have the ‘right’ to abortion?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Due in part to her success as a magazine writer, after joining the Coalition of 100 Black Women in New York, Dr. Tolbert was asked to join the board of Planned Parenthood.\u00a0Tolbert had been raised in church and her father was a pastor, but she writes<\/a>, “I knew little about abortion.” In her book she also describes being sought after to join Planned Parenthood:\u00a0“When a speech<\/a> I made received media coverage back home, I was greeted with my organization’s applause along with invitations to join two boards – The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and Planned Parenthood.”<\/p>\n

“In 1975, when I was asked to be a part of the board, I thought, this is a wonderful way for me to volunteer and help the women in my community. This is a great way to give back,” Dr. Tolbert told<\/a> an audience.<\/p>\n

Dr. Tolbert often points out<\/a> that abortion had just been legalized a few years earlier and many people, including her, were uneducated about abortion and the development of the preborn child in the womb.<\/p>\n

Dr. Tolbert says<\/a> that while she was with Planned Parenthood, she discovered that at one time, the state of New York’s Health Department required a death certificate for each baby that was aborted. “And I thought, death certificates? Well a death certificate is only required if somebody dies.”<\/p>\n

“And so, the information that I had learned that it was just a ‘blob of tissue,’ a ‘mass in the uterus,’ was not true.”<\/p>\n

“Later on, as I began to read, I asked a [Planned Parenthood] board member how abortions were performed – I protested that this was traumatic for the mother and her baby. But, I was corrected and told, ‘It is not traumatic!'”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Image:

Dr. La Verne Tolbert, former Planned Parenthood board member (Image credit: TooManyAborted.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

She described<\/a> her first Board meeting: “I remember walking into the first board meeting. And I was filled with anticipation. I was so excited to be there. And I took the bus from my job and the magazine where I worked and took it over to the Margaret Sanger Center.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Tolbert writes<\/a> that almost immediately she began to notice board members arriving to meetings in style:<\/p>\n

Over time I noticed that several of the board members arrived in chauffeured limousines. Who were these men of wealth, I wondered, and why were they so interested in the\u00a0people who lived in the inner-city?<\/em><\/p>\n

Once in the building, I walked past the clinic that served primarily African-American and Latino girls. The elevator took me upstairs to an imposingly large boardroom, and I took my seat with the striking observation that I was the\u00a0only person of color\u00a0in the room. The majority of board members were male, and the handful of women appeared to be much older than my twenty-seven years.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, we know that many of these “well-to-do men” as she described<\/a> them later, had been indoctrinated with the ideology of eugenics and population control, and Dr. Tolbert soon realized this as well, writing about it in her book<\/a>, \u201cKeeping You & Your Kids Sexually Pure\u201d:<\/p>\n

During the course of my five-year tenure, we received a lot of literature. Most discussed\u00a0population control\u00a0and the concern for the growing number of people in the world\u2014poor people in the United States and in developing countries. As the population grew, natural resources like air, water, and food were shrinking. I soon understood why the full name for this organization was\u00a0Planned Parenthood World Population. I struggled with the question, \u201cWhich population are they trying to control?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

As a black woman, the question kept coming back to me like a boomerang. I wondered why abortion was more necessary for my ethnic group, why this organization fought so hard to give us this particular \u201cright\u201d when the rights for better education, better jobs, and better housing seemed paramount.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Image:

Dr La Verne Tolbert tweet about Planned Parenthood<\/p><\/div>\n

Tolbert has publicly shared<\/a> her experiences of being the only African American on the Board of Planned Parenthood at that time, saying, “I would wonder, why are they so concerned about abortion being a right for us? Why is it more necessary for women in the inner city to have the ‘right’ to abortion?”\u00a0She added<\/a> at another event:<\/p>\n

And I thought, what about housing and jobs and schools?… And every time I asked the question, the boomerang came back to me. And, I realized that Planned Parenthood-World Population [as it was called at that time] had one goal. And that was to control the population of those people they considered to be dysgenic – those people who should not be procreating.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Image:

Definition of Dysgenic<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

Tolbert added, “The reason I was asked to be on the board was because I was the daughter of a pastor. And they realized the importance of those in the religious community preaching to our own community the ‘right’ to have an abortion.”<\/p>\n