As Cecile Richards gets ready to leave Planned Parenthood, abortion activists are mulling who the next leader of the abortion chain should be.
Huffington Post writer Loretta Ross argued that a black woman should be given the position.
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in America. Under Richards, the abortion chain lost more than half a million patients, increased abortions and became more political. As she leaves, many wonder what new direction the abortion chain will take.
Ross claimed that black women need someone who will stand up against racism and for women’s “reproductive rights,” a new phrase abortion activists use to mean unrestricted abortion on demand up to birth.
She said the abortion chain needs a political leader who “feels the urgent threat of racism, sexism and income inequality in her very bones, as well as the threat to truth, evidence and democracy itself. These, too, are necessities, without which the movement to protect and expand women’s human rights will not survive.
“… her replacement must be prepared to stare down gathering white supremacist and anti-choice forces with clear eyes,” Ross continued. “For that reason, PPFA’s next president should be a woman of color.”
Ross claimed that black women have not been given the voice that they deserve at Planned Parenthood and in the pro-abortion movement.
Perhaps it is because many have been treated as commodities rather than valuable human beings. Many believe that Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities target black women and their unborn babies for abortions. One analysis found that the abortion chain placed 79 percent of its abortion facilities within walking distance of minority neighborhoods.
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The abortion rate is disproportionately high in the black American community. Even though black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, 35 percent of the babies killed in abortions are black, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The black genocide of abortion is disturbingly evident in New York City, where state data shows more black babies are aborted than are born.
Yet, Ross blasted pro-lifers, lumping them in with white supremacists, for working to save unborn babies from abortion, including babies of color:
This overt and covert white supremacist movement ― which we see in the “alt-right,” the far right, the religious right and complicit Republicans ― aims to compel white women to produce more children, through endless restrictions on abortion, birth control and sex education. For all their mealy-mouthed pro-life rhetoric and their concerted efforts to make it harder for black and brown women to obtain contraception, no close observer of these groups and their preferred policies believes their goal is more black and brown babies in America.
However, even Ross admitted that the abortion chain makes most of its money ($1.46 billion in 2016) off black women.
“Planned Parenthood’s financial structure depends on the low-income black and brown women who rely on its services in communities with the greatest needs …” she wrote.
She also admitted that Planned Parenthood has a difficult history because of its eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger. While Ross said she does not think Sanger was really racist, she admitted that Sanger was “decidedly prejudiced against people with disabilities.”
Ross said the new CEO of Planned Parenthood must be able to reconcile its sordid past with its present goals.
But the new goals really are not that different. Planned Parenthood is not a key provider of women’s health care. It is a key provider of abortions. Basically all of its non-abortion services have dropped steadily in the past decade, while abortions have increased. In 2017, it even refused President Donald Trump’s offer of an increase in taxpayer funding if it stopped doing abortions.
Women of color and their babies deserve support, care and compassion, not death. Only if Planned Parenthood’s new leader ends its deadly abortion practices will women of color and all women and their babies truly be protected and valued.
