News

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

WASHINGTON, DC, June 26, 2008 (LifeSIteNews.com) – A group of African-American pastors are in Washington today to demand that candidates from both parties reject money from Planned Parenthood, claiming the abortion provider promotes a racist agenda.

The pastors, who will be led by the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., Alveda King, plan to march to the Washington offices of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee where they will hold two separate press conferences.

“We are very concerned that Planned Parenthood is targeting African American communities and African American babies,” said Alveda King.

She and Day Gardner, of the National Black Pro-Life Union, are leading the coalition of more than 50 pastors, who represent churches and anti-abortion organizations.

“Any candidate who continues…by accepting campaign contributions says that you’re not as concerned about civil rights for all people,” King told FOXNews. “It’s an anti-civil rights act to support Planned Parenthood.”

The group said Planned Parenthood plans to pump $10 million in campaign funds into the November election.

The pastors will be joined by pro-life students from Students For Life of America, an organization that coordinates 441 student pro-life groups across the US.

A news release from the group of pastors noted that, apart from the majority of Planned Parenthood abortion clinics being located in minority neighborhoods, the abortion provider is also currently under criminal investigation in Kansas for falsifying documents and performing illegal late-term abortions. The group also observed that the former Vice President of Finance and Administration for the Los Angeles Planned Parenthood has accused California Planned Parenthood of defrauding US taxpayers upwards of $180 million.

The pastors also called attention to the investigation by pro-life students at the University of California at Los Angeles newspaper, The Advocate, who taped a conversation between an actor posing as a racist donor and offering money to be directed toward aborting “black babies”, and an Idaho Planned Parenthood employee (a development director) who said she was “excited” at the possibility of taking money specifically earmarked to kill black children.

“The Idaho Planned Parenthood development director expressed excitement,” Kristan Hawkins, the executive director of Students for Life, said. “She said she wanted to make sure she was getting everything down because this was the first time this had happened to her and she was very excited. She also laughed when the actor said ‘the less black babies out there, the better,’ and said ‘understandable, understandable’.” (See the video of the conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LJVPVh5TWo)

The Idaho branch of Planned Parenthood later apologized, saying their employee showed “a serious lack of judgment,” but no disciplinary action was taken.

Planned Parenthood also complained that they had been set up, saying that “had the employees been properly prepared for this kind of attack, they would have figured out that the calls were nothing short of a cruel hoax, designed to portray Planned Parenthood as money-grubbing racists.”

Colin Mason, media director of the Population Research Institute, commenting on this, said, “In other words, Planned Parenthood is claiming that the student investigators (mean and spiteful right-wingers) somehow tricked its sophisticated fundraisers into sounding like ‘money-grubbing racists.’ To which we say ‘If they sounded like money-grubbing racists,’ this is because they probably are money-grubbing racists. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …”

The African-American pastors said the investigation proved abortion and race are inextricably linked.

Read previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage of the Students for Life investigations:

Undercover Investigation Reveals Planned Parenthood’s Racism
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08022802.html

Planned Parenthood – Racist Donations Welcome We Abort Black Babies
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/apr/08040303.html

Planned Parenthood Caught on Tape Covering Up Statutory Rape – Threatens Lawsuit to Hide Evidence
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07051504.html