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NAACP ignores pro-lifers

Trailer Park Feminist

LOL! Pro-lifers from Georgia are upset about being ignored again at the NAACP annual convention:

This July approximately 8,000 NAACP members met in Detroit for the organization’s annual convention. While Saturday’s major theme was improving access to heath care, NAACP authorities rejected the pro-life resolution of the Macon, Georgia, chapter for the second time since 2004.

Well, duh. “Pro-life resolutions” are about removing access to health care, not improving it.

Dr. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and pastoral associate for Priests for Life, strongly urged the NAACP to recognize the importance of the pro-life resolution. “The NAACP has always been about justice,” said King, quoted in the Christian Post. “Today, there is no greater injustice facing black people than abortion.”

No greater injustice?? Seriously? What about all the poverty and the lack of health care and the racist justice system? If black women were not more likely to be faced with these injustices (and many others), they would not be more likely to abort.

A friend of mine once had to abort a twin pregnancy because she already had one baby (under 1), her boyfriend was mentally ill, violent and always out of work, her car was a broken-down piece of shit, and she lived with her terminally ill mother in a tiny, rented duplex. The family was struggling to care for the one baby while she attended community college; three would have been impossible.

But according to these crazy pro-lifers, the fact that she was allowed to have a safe, doctor-provided abortion so she could survive it and finish school and get a good job to give her daughter a better life is the greatest injustice of all! Give me a fucking break.

cross-posted

(Sorry for the delete and repost. My HTML got screwed up somehow, and it wouldn’t save my edit.)

20 thoughts on NAACP ignores pro-lifers

  1. This is a new low. A nice break from hearing abortions compared to the Holocaust, but still.

  2. I’m seriously ashamed of Alveda King right now and so glad the NAACP stood its ground. Although they have been just as ridiculous lately, staging that funeral for the word “nigger.” Nigga, please.

  3. I do think, however, that it’s important to note that, especially for women of colour, reproductive freedom encompasses more than just access to abortion. Though obviously the latter is important, as the NAACP thankfully realizes.

  4. Reproductive rights have a very different meaning for black Americans. In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts documents a pretty extensive history where virtually all reproductive rights, from birth control to sterilization to abortion, have been used to basically wipe out black people. And it’s always couched in terms of helping them.

    I strongly recommend the book because it moves the terms of the debate from simply “pro-choice” which the right warps into “pro-abortion,” to basic human rights of the individual.

  6. She didn’t realyl say that abortion was the biggest injustice? Did she? Really? OMG I can’t even respond to the kind of blindness it takes to see abortion as biggest issue facing black women today.

  8. Tom brings up another great point. Historically, reproductive rights for white women have always been about access to birth control and abortion, where for many minority women is has been for the right to procreate when and how they see fit. I’m a woman of color, but I’ve always been upper middle class so it’s not a struggle that has always resonated with me.

  9. I do think, however, that it’s important to note that, especially for women of colour, reproductive freedom encompasses more than just access to abortion.

    Yes, but that’s not the argument that these pro-lifers are trying to make. They’re not saying that we need to improve education and health care so black women feel they have the resources to raise a child. They’re just another group of delusionists who think that banning abortion would stop it.

  10. Dare she forget the continuing cycles of poverty & incarceration?
    family planning efforts are proven to make families more financially secure and more valued. Cristina Page writes about this in her birthcontrolwatch.org blog: if Dr. King is so pro-life, the best thing she can do is to give people the means to plan their pregnancies. pro-life goals seem to be better accomplished in the pro-choice movement than in any pro-life movement.

  11. They’re just another group of delusionists who think that banning abortion would stop it.

    Or, even if it didn’t stop abortion, it would have the added benefit of locking up all the sluts who tried to obtain one. Score one for democracy!

  12. Yes, but that’s not the argument that these pro-lifers are trying to make. They’re not saying that we need to improve education and health care so black women feel they have the resources to raise a child. They’re just another group of delusionists who think that banning abortion would stop it.

    Absolutely. They’re not the right people to have the conversation with. Which doesn’t make the conversation unimportant.

  13. Ugh. I was willing to cut some slack because they described the resolution as an…

    attempt to address the pressing issues of abortion and infant mortality in the American African community

    That’s the first time I’ve ever heard the purported pro-Life movement give a shit about a fetus once it slides into home plate. But click through the related link on the bottom of the page and we find the NAACP compromising in order to better serve the black community, while the pro-Lifers dig in their heels, and call everyone “pro abortion” and “liars.”

    Goddamnit.

  14. even if it didn’t stop abortion, it would have the added benefit of locking up all the sluts who tried to obtain one.

    Or killing them. Ugh.

    Can I mention that I really hate when we use anti-choicers’ rhetoric by calling them pro-life? I’m pretty sure we are all aware that they are not the pro-life people, in any definition of the word. Anti-choice, forced-birth, take your pick, but please don’t call them pro-life.

  15. Absolutely. They’re not the right people to have the conversation with. Which doesn’t make the conversation unimportant.

    Sorry, didn’t mean to imply that it’s not an important conversation to have, just saying that the fetus fans are not the people to have it with.

  16. My opinion about the NAACP aside, this illustrates something about black conservatives. Since the conservatives here belong to the NAACP, it’s not a perfect illustration, but…it amazes me that black conservatives can tell black liberals that they are on the plantation, denounce them as poverty pimps and race hustlers, and then be expected to be welcomed into liberal black political organizations, functions, etc. with open arms, and get quite indignant when they’re not. Weird.

  17. I believe Dr. King would be ashamed of Alveda, as well.
    Probably not.

    The ’60 civil rights leaders were not particularly pro-choice. As late as 1977, Jesse Jackson addressed the March for Life and “equated legalized abortion to modern-day slavery, and Roe vs. Wade decision to the Dred Scot decision.” At the time King recieved the Planned Parenthood award, the organization was still publicly anti-abortion, having published a pamplet in 1963 which stated that “[a]n abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.”

  18. Keep in mind that women of color have long had their reproductive capacities infringed on by white people. Often, it was forced or coerced sterilization; in the days of slavery, it was forced pregnancy. Anti-choicers are trying to do the same thing today — they’re controlling women’s reproductice capactities, and that’s something that women of color have had too much experience with. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, was very pro-choice, and continued on her husband’s legacy. Who do you think knew him better — his life partner, or his niece who was a child when he died?

  19. Who do you think knew him better — his life partner, or his niece who was a child when he died?

    Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stridently denounced abortion as a form of genocide in many speeches.

    Who do you think knew him better — his life partner or himself?

    The question is really what King believed, not what someone else believed he believed. America has long rejected the rule than one spouse speaks for other, so husbands and wives are permitted to disagree. Coretta Scott King may well have thought her pro-choice stand was consistent in some way with his legacy, but I doubt you’ll find any statements from her anywhere claiming that he was actually pro-choice during their time together.

  20. Pingback: Feministe » But Abraham Lincoln was a Republican! That’s good enough, right?

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