The Sunday before Martin Luther King Day, I traveled to Houston to speak at a rally designed to protest the opening of Planned Parenthood’s largest U.S. facility. Over 10,000 gathered at Grace Community Church, led by Dr. Steve Riggle, for an evening praise and prayer rally. The crowd consisted of 70 percent twenty-somethings and an incredibly, racially diverse group approximately 60 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, and 10 percent black. On MLK Day a 10,000-plus group gathered at Catholic Charismatic Center in Houston once again for an additional prayer meeting and rally. Unfortunately, only 3,000 of us were allowed to march near the Planned Parenthood facility.
In my opening words, I recounted my family’s civil rights legacy. This legacy includes many elements: a state trooper threatening my father at gunpoint for getting involved in voter registration, his discovery of several men’s lynched bodies hanging from trees as he worked his paper route and the story of a man in his town set on fire and dragged through his town square.
After sharing that brief glimpse into some of the horrors of my family’s background, I let the audience know that African Americans believe Planned Parenthood, which started with groups like the KKK, continues its targeted genocide focused on blacks and other minorities. Many people are unaware that Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s founder, was an ideological soul mate of Hitler - part of what was known as the Eugenics Movement.
I told the group that it was important to grasp the progression of the Eugenics Movement. Margaret Sanger wrote in her first handbook, What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, these ominous words, “It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stoop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them.”
As the movement grew, Madison Grant (a Yale educated lawyer) wrote a popular book in 1916, which includes the diabolical root concepts, which led to the sterilization of individuals from black and other groups who were deemed to have arrested development or retardation. In The Passing of the Great Race he made the following incredible statements:
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“A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit -- in other words social failures -- would allow us to solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated, and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever-increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types."
When this book was translated into German in 1925, one of its early fans was none other than Adolph Hitler. Hitler wrote to Grant, “…this book is my bible.” We all know that Hitler became the mastermind behind the systematic plan to destroy the Jews based on the revelations in this book.
With this background in mind, I ended my remarks sharing that my own wife’s two pre-marriage abortions may have caused the two miscarriages she had during our marriage. More specifically, I referenced that we have had two wonderful, accomplished daughters - but no boys. I feel that one of the miscarried babies was definitely a son - A son that I hope I will meet some day in heaven.
I secretly choked back my tears and finished my speech. As an African American, I am outraged that the facility is strategically located in the geographic center of a four-community circle. Three of these communities are home to over 80 percent Hispanics, while the third is home to an 80 percent black population. Once again Planned Parenthood, who receives one third of its 1 billion dollar annual budget from federal funds, has set its sights on aborting the babies of “inferior races.”
Before our press conference, we walked around the entire complex. This building is the largest abortion center in North America. Many of my pro-life associates have dubbed it an “abortion super center.” They are especially concerned about the clinic's ambulatory surgical unit. This unit can perform abortions up to 25 weeks of gestation under Texas law, instead of the 15th-week-limit allowed by current Planned Parenthood facilities in the region. Although Planned Parenthood leaders have attempted to minimize the size and function of the center, they claim that only one third of the facility will actually be used for “health services.” They justify their work by citing the fact that their practice is legal under the law. Further, they say that one out of three women in the United States will have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old, remarking that the safe practices of today’s clinics are far better than the deaths and wounding that have historically occurred from home abortions. Finally, longevity is often this group’s ultimate claim to modern-day authenticity. Planned Parenthood spokespersons in Houston were quick to remind the press that their group has operated in Houston for 75 years.
Those of us who gathered decided that we must campaign against abortion in Houston and the rest of the nation. Many of the leaders who participated with us have committed to promote domestic adoptions and to open crisis pregnancy centers around the nation. Preventing abortions is impossible unless we also promote safe births, adoptions and a community of caring that promotes life.
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