'Abortion and racism are evil twins, born of the same lie'

Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who had two abortions of her own, makes a case against abortion and asks all of us to join her in "the civil rights movement of our century -- the right of every one of every race to live."

She notes that abortion affects the black community disproportionately.

Abortion has taken a gruesome toll on the black community, killing more than AIDS and crime combined. Some 14 million black babies have been aborted since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in all stages in all 50 states. That's equal to one-third of the number of blacks living today.

By the abortion industry's own statistics, black women are 4.8 times more likely to abort than are non-Hispanic white women. Blacks comprise about 13 percent of the population, yet have 37 percent of all abortions.

When dramatic racial disparities like these appeared in employment and education, it was enough to conclude that institutionalized racism and discrimination were present in our corporations and colleges. Why should we apply a different standard to the abortion industry?

Abortion and racism, King shows, spring from the same lie. Both deny fundamental human equality by setting a particular class of human beings aside to be treated as less than human.

Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated. So it is with abortion.

Racism oppresses its victims, but also binds the oppressors, who sear their consciences with more and more lies until they become prisoners of those lies. They cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit. While victims die physically, practitioners die spiritually. So it is with abortion.

Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals. So it is with abortion.

King concludes:

Abortion targets blacks disproportionately, but it affects everyone. And as my uncle, Martin Luther King, wrote from the Birmingham jail, "[i]njustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Abortion is an attack on the family and the humanity that unites us all.

My Uncle Martin also wrote: "The Negro cannot win if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety." Those words are still true today. After all, how can the dream survive if we let them take our children?