Planned Parenthood keeps killing them softly

By: Dan Fitzpatrick

Posted: 7/23/08

I'm surprised the Black community in Portland isn't up in arms right now - one of their new neighbors has a proven track record of anti-Black bigotry and violence. A new Planned Parenthood center is being built in Northeast Portland on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The process has become heated because in June, the construction company set to build the center pulled out of the project due to continuous pro-life protests. But the developer isn't worried, as The Oregonian reported: "James Adamson, one of the associates in Beech Street [the development company], said that, however uncomfortable, he respects that protesters have the right to voice their opinion. 'And we also have fair protection under the law,' he said. 'It's basically a big exercise of free speech.'"

Sadly, this latent snobbery exists in many Oregonians. They have nominal respect for free speech but have little regard for what is actually being said. How tragic that monstrous things are being done in Northeast Portland, with most of the victims likely to be black, and the only reaction is dismissing it all as "an exercise." It's certainly much easier to pretend that a new PP is a good thing, but the facts tell a different story. The Oregonian article calls the company a non-profit (despite the $336 million it receives in tax dollars and its $115 million per year profit margin) that provides 38 percent of its patients with contraception, 29 percent with STI treatment, and 3 percent with abortions. If its biggest seller is allegedly effective contraception and barrier methods (meant to prevent disease and pregnancy), then why do a third of its patients come in for STI treatments or abortions?

PP essentially operates as a racket: It sells people contraception that often is ineffective, so when it fails, its customers can return and demand medical treatment. Convincingly sell people a problem, and there's a good chance they'll return to buy the solution.

But it's not even a matter of windfall profits or shady business practices. The issue is the product. PP claims to sell sexual responsibility - implying that clients should use contraception or abort unplanned children because it's the responsible thing to do. But just as latent smugness has bled into Oregonians, so has subtle bigotry leaked into feminism and the abortion industry.

It can be traced back to Margaret Sanger, founder of the American Birth Control League (which became PP). Sanger was a major proponent of eugenics and strongly believed that members of the "unfit" classes should not be allowed to reproduce. To this end, Sanger loudly promoted birth control, especially among Blacks and the poor, and though Sanger herself was against abortion, calling it a "barbaric" taking of life, it's little surprise the organization and movement she helped launch have embraced it so totally. Abortion is simply the logical conclusion of the mentality Sanger promoted. This mentality holds that women cannot control themselves and would be unfit mothers, so they should, respectively, use contraception to sterilize fertility and undergo abortions to prevent them from ever having a child. Sanger herself seemed to admit as much in a 1957 interview, saying, "I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin - that people can - can commit."

None of this is intentional in today's feminism and abortion industry; it's simply been unthinkingly integrated into it. Combined with the liberal entitlement and noblesse oblige philosophies that already undermine the Black community's ability to thrive under its own power, this bigoted view of women and Blacks has deadly consequences.

As author Jonah Goldberg points out, "Abortion ends more Black lives than heart disease, cancer, accidents, AIDS and violent crime combined. African Americans constitute little more than 12 percent of the population but have more than a third (37 percent) of abortions... Nationwide, 512 out of every 1,000 Black pregnancies end in an abortion. Revealingly enough, roughly 80 percent of PP's abortion centers are in or near minority communities." And the trend will only continue in Northeast Portland.

Rebecca Walker, the daughter of Black feminist icon and "The Color Purple" author Alice Walker, found out first-hand the destruction that arises from the twisted philosophies of PP and feminism. Last May, Rebecca wrote in London's Daily Mail how she "grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale."

As her loneliness grew due to her mother's emotional absence, Rebecca began having sex at age 13 (with her mother's blessing) and would undergo an abortion at 14 despite being on the pill. Her mother and mother's boyfriend escorted her to the abortion clinic.

Following the procedure, Rebecca wrote, "the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had [new son] Tenzin, I was terrified that I'd never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong."

Yet, in Northeast Portland, the architect continues the building project because, "[developer Adamson]'s really trying to do the right thing and improve that neighborhood." I don't doubt that the black community of Portland will soon suffer these "improvements," as PP kills them softly through abortions, sterilization-via-contraception, and family devastation. While the aborted children will never be able to spin in their graves, I wonder if Margaret Sanger is smiling from hers.