October 26, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One important reason the black community doesn’t speak out against abortion is that so many lives have been impacted by abortion, says one prominent African-American pro-life leader.
In a recent online column, Pastor Walter Hoye of Issues4Life said that his community and its social leaders must overcome the “betrayal trauma” that keeps them from facing the personal and public tragedy of abortion head on.
“The number one reason black leadership rejects the pro-life movement is that he or she is post-abortive,” wrote Hoye. “In other words, there is an abortion in his or her life somewhere.”
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In some cases, this can lead black leaders to “perpetrate the genocide of their own people” by embracing pro-abortion ideology, due to an unwillingness to confront how the abortion has affected themselves and the relationships in their lives.
“As we dig deeper into the trauma of betrayal … and only if we are willing to be transparently honest with ourselves, is it easy to understand why leaders would rather live with themselves by ignoring the betrayal, than risk the ruin that can result from privately and publicly confessing and confronting the betrayal,” Hoye said.
“Because abortion is clearly a matter of the heart, we must understand that only the love of Christ can heal a heart. If the Apostle Peter is an example of a leader who acted contrary to his core values, then even though our leaders are smiling on the outside, many of them are swallowing a toxic sense of ‘self-betrayal’ … on the inside, with nobody to blame but themselves.”
Hoye has co-sponsored outreach campaigns to alert the black community to its disproportionate abortion rate, which is 3 to 5 times higher than other ethnic groups, including a 60-billboard campaign in Oakland this summer. Nonetheless, the billboards have often been derided by local minority pro-abortion leaders as “racist.”
The soft-spoken pastor, who was recently awarded Life Issues Institute’s Hero Heart Award, is also known for his peaceful witness outside an Oakland, Calif. abortion clinic and arrest under a bubble-zone ordinance that was enacted mainly to deter Hoye. He served 18 days in jail and paid a fine before his conviction was overturned.