You Can Go Home Again, But Planned Parenthood May be Doing Abortions
by Maria Vitale
LifeNews.com Editorial Columnist
April 8, 2010
LifeNews.com Note: Maria Vitale is an opinion columnist for LifeNews.com. She is the Public Relations Director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation and Vitale has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio.
I thought it would be heartwarming to return to the neighborhood in which I grew up. I could relive the days of childhood, when I walked to the ice cream store and the movie theater, and sat beneath the little tree in the backyard reading books from the local library.
Much remains unchanged in that little corner of the world. The ice cream store, the theater, and the library are all still there, and the trees in bloom are just as lovely as they were in my youth. But part of the neighborhood has obviously declined, and one of the biggest blights in the area is the Planned Parenthood abortion center.
I remember my neighborhood being so welcoming of children. The local public elementary school would stage a lavish event called the Fun Frolic, where little girls competed in games for the chance to take home the Barbie dolls dressed in elaborate gowns crafted by the mothers of students.
In my kindergarten class, there were a boy who was dramatically visually impaired and another who used braces to walk—our kindergarten teacher never allowed their disabilities to prevent them from fully participating in our class.
And now, women can routinely dispose of their children at the facility up the block.
I don’t think it’s just coincidence that Planned Parenthood came in at a time when the neighborhood had grown poorer and during an era in which the minority population had increased. The abortion industry targets the poor and minorities—hardly a surprise, considering the fact that Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, believed in limiting populations she deemed unworthy.
In her 1915 handbook, What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, she noted:
“It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the word children whose parents cannot provide for them.”
In one of her most telling communications, Sanger wrote, “We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
At www.blackgenocide.org, the Life Education Resource Network notes that, while African-Americans account for about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they undergo a disproportionate 35 percent of abortions. The site poses these insightful questions:
“Are we being targeted? Isn’t that genocide?”
There have been many improvements to my old neighborhood over the years. A beautification project has made the area more picturesque than ever, and new coffee shops and restaurants can be found all along Main Street.
But the abortion center there stands as a monument to pain, destruction, and hopelessness. I return to the neighborhood with sadness, knowing that children routinely lose their lives there, and that countless mothers are left to grieve what might have been. You can go home again. However, when home is now home to an abortion center, the joy of the journey is overshadowed by the darkness of despair.
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