Dr. Willie Parker, a doctor who advocates and performs late-term abortions, has been having quite the publicity tour of late. He’s been doing a host of interviews and TV appearances promoting his book, Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice. Parker claims to be a Christian re-claiming the moral high ground on abortion and also tends to bring up race issues and “the patriarchy.”
Dr. Parker runs the “Pink House” abortion clinic, an abortion clinic that is literally painted pink, in Mississippi. He has been described as a hero amongst abortion providers. He believes that as a “male and a man in a patriarchal world,” his challenge “was to decide that I would not participate in a process that would subordinate women solely because of accidental biology.”
He spoke Wednesday at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. and was asked about those in the pro-life movement that argue that abortion is “black genocide” based on the disproportionately high rates of abortion in the black community.
Parker called this a “Jedi mind trick.”
“I say it’s a Jedi mind trick,” he explained, “because the irony is if you say that women, poor women, are committing genocide and you try and force them to continue pregnancies and then you deny them access to the very human services that would provide a modicum of dignity both for themselves and their children.”
If you believe that women need abortion to maintain their dignity that response is logical, albeit somewhat sexist. It’s the next thing he says that gives one pause.
“What it means,” he claimed, “is what you’re really trying to do is control abortion, control the fertility of black woman and thereby you control the fertility of all women. Paradoxically you say oh you want to decrease abortion services but what you’re really doing is you’re trying to control the fertility of white women. Why? Because if you’re feeling racially vulnerable in terms of with the browning of America, given that by 2050 there’ll be no clear cut numerical majority, it’ll be a constellation of minorities.”
Okay, so according to Dr. Parker, people who are trying to prevent the abortion of black babies, meaning what they are advocating for would increase the black population, are actually trying to increase the white population because they’re afraid of minorities? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to not speak out at all about the abortion of black babies and just discourage white women from having abortions?
Perhaps Dr. Parker went on to address this? Nope.
“What you really want to do is control the fertility of white women because the only people who can have white babies are white women,” he went on. “White men have a baby with a non-white woman, that baby’s not white. White woman has a baby with a non-white man, that baby’s not white. Only white women can have white babies with white men.”
“If you’re feeling racially vulnerable,” he emphasized, “it makes sense that you would try and control the fertility of white women because if you believe white privilege has to be preserved and this was a white country to start and it has to remain one, that makes sense if you see the rise of the alt-right, the mass immigration, the deportation policies and the like.”
So apparently expressing concern over the disproportionately high rate of abortion in the black community is a way to control every woman’s fertility as part of the larger plot to preserve white privilege.
“What happens is you can’t attack women who are getting education, running for office, because they’re rejecting the primacy of motherhood,” Parker continued, “and having aspirations beyond the model that would allow you to make them the repository of white culture. So I say it’s disingenuous at best and it’s downright cynical at worst to force people into more misery and suffering and that’s what you do when you deny poor women of color the right to control their fertility.”
Dr. Parker made a similar argument in an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this month, claiming of the pro-life movement, “if they can stop abortion for black women, they can stop abortion for all women. This is their primary interest. The only person who can have white babies is a white woman.”
He was also featured in a somewhat gruesome interview in Esquire where he coolly identified aborted baby parts for the interviewer.
“This one is six weeks. It's just lumps of red tissue floating in water.
When the triplets arrive, he points out one sac, two sacs, three sacs.
But then he brings in one that's nine weeks and there's a fetus. He points out the scattered parts. ‘There's the skull, what is going to be the fetal skull. And there are the eye sockets.’
Floating near the top of the dish are two tiny arms with two tiny hands.
Parker continues to examine the tissue. He points to a black spot the size of a pencil tip. ‘That's an eye.’
‘That black spot?’
‘That black spot is an eye. And here's the umbilical cord.’"
He reassures the interviewer who notes that “it's hard not to look at those tiny fingers, no bigger than the tip of a toothpick.”
He says the parts don’t disturb him because “I'm not deluded about what this whole process is."
Dr. Parker might want to consider that the pro-life movement is disturbed by those tiny fingers, skulls, and eyes. It might be that and not white supremacy that's making them fight to stop the abortion of black and white babies, just a thought.