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August 26, 2010
RCRC's Reverend Carlton Veazey & Other Leading African American Clergy & Civil Rights Activists Blast Glenn Beck Rally & Alveda King’s “Freedom Rides for the Unborn” as Insulting to Americans of All Races & to the Legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Leading African American clergy and civil rights activists blasted the August 28 Glenn Beck rally and Alveda King’s “Freedom Rides for the Unborn” as insulting to Americans of all races and religions who have worked for equality, unity, and inclusion and contrary to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideals of justice, freedom, and respect for the dignity of all people. The controversial rally is being held on the 47th anniversary of Dr. King’s historic “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the landmark March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

“The ‘Religious Right’ and the Tea Party can hold a rally on the anniversary of a time that is sacred in our nation’s march to equality but there is no question that they are not – and never have been -- concerned about the African American community or about the racism, poverty and injustice that Dr. King was dedicated to eradicating,” said Reverend Dr. Carlton W. Veazey, President and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC). The national interfaith coalition sponsored a news conference today (August 26) to raise awareness about “Religious Right” attempts to hijack the civil rights movement for its own political agenda.

“The ‘Religious Right’ billboard campaign asserting that African American children are an ‘endangered species’ and Alveda King’s comparison of anti-abortion activists to ‘Freedom Riders’ have sparked outrage in the African American community,” said Reverend Veazey. “Disparaging clinics that provide abortion, birth control and reproductive health services is harmful to individual women and to communities struggling with high rates of unintended pregnancy, teen births and HIV/AIDS. It insults the intelligence and values of African Americans and is offensive to women who make conscientious moral decisions about pregnancy.”

Likening the events of 2010 to the 1963 March on Washington, Reverend Dr. Walter Fauntroy, an organizer of the 1963 March, proclaimed that the broad human rights community must re-organize as a renewed "coalition of conscience" for the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides and the March. Dean Alton B. Pollard III of Howard University School of Divinity, Chair of the RCRC Board of Directors, said that the historic civil rights movement has a noble history based in the desire for freedom for all  while the Beck rally and Tea Party have transgressed against freedom and dignity and created a grave injustice. 

Reverend Dr. Timothy McDonald, Pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta and an immediate past member of the RCRC Board who served as the assistant minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dr. King's church in Atlanta, and had close connections to Mrs. Coretta Scott King and others in the King family, pointed out that teen pregnancy in the African American community is often related to poverty. He urged the "Religious Right" to "walk the walk" and join with RCRC and other women's health and anti-poverty and anti-racism advocates to provide accurate information and services that enable women to make their own choices. Alveda King and others on the "Religious Right" who want to rewrite history in the name of Dr. King should remember that Dr. King and Mrs. King supported family planning services to improve the lives of African American women aned families, he said. Dr. King was honored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1966.

Jill Morrison, senior counsel in reproductive health and rights at the National Women’s Law Center, characterized “Religious Right” claims that abortion in the African American community amounts to genocide as an “attempt to infantilize, dehumanize and objectify Black women under the guise of protecting the race.”  Dr. Willie Parker, women's reproductive health provider and board member of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, asked that we "connect the dots" - "abortions come from unplanned unwanted pregnancies, which occur to poor women and women of color more frequently." Loretta Ross, national coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, which led the successful effort to defeat the “Right to Life” billboard and legislation campaign in Georgia, called claims of genocide “racist, sexist and anti-Semitic” and an affront to the millions who died in the Nazi Holocaust.

Town Hall Meeting
6 pm – 8 pm, Thursday, August 26, 2010
Covenant Baptist Church, 3845 S. Capitol Street SW, Washington, DC 20032
Panel discussion with prominent community and religious leaders, video,
and dinner. RSVP by Monday, August 26, to Minister Camphor at 202-562-5576
to be on the list for dinner.

What We Must Do to Counter
Racist Campaign Against Women of Color

Statement of Reverend Dr. Carlton W. Veazey, President and CEO,
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

April 19, 2010
Georgia Right to Life’s racist campaign against women of color is poised to
expand to black churches and college campuses in 10 states. In the service of
truth and of protecting women’s health and rights, people of faith must counter
this campaign of fear, ignorance and mistrust. One specific and realistic way to
do so is by supporting comprehensive sexuality education. I speak as an
African American, Baptist, and pastor for more than 40 years. We cannot allow
women of color to return to the days when their bodies and lives were controlled
by others – when they were treated as property.

There is a long history of outside groups agitating against reproductive rights in
African American communities and making outrageous claims such as “abortion
is genocide.” But several factors make this campaign especially immoral: the
dehumanizing shock tactics used by Georgia Right to Life, the unwarranted
legislation, and the attempt to close clinics that are needed and wanted.
We cannot allow it to spread to other states.

The campaign consists of billboards and legislation. The initial billboards in
Atlanta showed a picture of a black child with the shocking statement that
“Black Children are an Endangered Species.” They were so inflammatory that
they were taken down. The legislation, which potentially can shut down clinics,
would outlaw abortion done “based upon the race, color or gender of the
unborn child” – despite no evidence of these alleged abuses and no need
for the bill. The bill “reads like an indictment of any black woman who seeks to
terminate a pregnancy,” writes Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Journal & Constitution.

This campaign preys on fears that arise from our history of slavery, abuse,
discrimination and marginalization. For 14 years, the Religious Coalition for
Reproductive Choice’s National Black Church Initiative has worked with African
American clergy and laity and congregations to shatter the bonds of fear that
keep us from fully addressing sexuality issues that affect our youth and adults.
When once it was taboo to talk of sex and sexuality, today hundreds of ministers
and religious educators speak about responsible decision-making in the context
of African American religion and culture. We cannot allow fear-mongering and
falsehoods to undo this progress in our community or to rob African American
women of their freedom.

It is our duty to present honest, clear information about access to family planning and
abortion in the African American community. Pregnancy rates among black teens are
higher than rates among white teens. Nearly half of young African-American women
(48 percent) are infected with a sexually transmitted diseases, compared to
20 percent of young white women.

Among women of all ages, black Americans are almost four times as likely as whites to
have an abortion. Antiabortion activists such as the Georgia Right to Life campaigners use
this statistic to make the groundless argument that the “abortion industry” is targeting and
marketing aggressively to African American communities. In fact, black women’s higher
abortion rates are directly related to their higher rates of unintended pregnancy and
to broader health disparities.

Persistent reproductive health and health care disparities perpetuate a cycle of poverty
and are serious problems for the African American community. Providing comprehensive
sexuality education for youth and expanding family planning and reproductive health care
services are proven ways to improve health and life prospects. Closing clinics and scaring
women and men can only hurt the African American community. RCRC’s National Black Church
Initiative will continue to provide educational programs for youth and adults that teach responsible
decision-making and build on the values of family and faith. Love and respect will triumph!  

Statement of Solidarity with African American Women

We who trust women stand in solidarity with and support of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive
Justice Collective, SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW!, SisterLove, Planned Parenthood of Georgia, and Feminist Women’s Health Center to affirm our belief that every woman has the human right to decide if and when she will have a baby, and the right to parent the children she already has with the social supports necessary. In our struggle for reproductive justice, African American women have a unique history that we must remember in order to ensure bodily sovereignty, dignity, and collective uplift of our community.

The choices that women of color make are based on their lived experiences in this country and reflect
multiple oppressions, including race, class, and gender, and their efforts to resist them. It is unacceptable to speak to the needs of any woman, or her children without taking into consideration the realities that exist in her home and local community.

We affirm that an African American woman’s ability to determine if and when she will have children
demands that she control the conditions under which she will give birth and have the power to decide
the spacing of her children. These freedoms speak to the power and necessity of the preventive care of women before they become pregnant and the importance of comprehensive sex education for all of our children to understand their human right to sexuality in an empowering and responsible way. It means fully funding public education, protecting the environment in all communities, and eliminating sexual violence for all women.

We affirm that an African American woman’s ability to determine if and when she does not have children must include a full range of options including the right to have an abortion. For women of color the privilege to exercise this right all too often hinges on other factors in her home and community. Abortion must be approached in the context of the individual woman and the circumstances surrounding her, such as poverty, sexual abuse, lack of health care. To extract a woman from the context of her life dishonors her lived experiences and the plight of a broader community of people.

We affirm that African American women have the human right to parent the children they already have.
To ensure the full enjoyment of this right, they must also have access to the social supports necessary to raise their children in safe environments and healthy communities, without fear of violence from individuals or intervention by the government. A continuum of care is essential to protect the lives of women and children. And we must prioritize the needs of children after birth. This includes funding education, investing in health care reform for all, ensuring food security and prioritizing the unification of our families through the provision of social supports to protect the most vulnerable.

Protecting women and children requires a commitment to these principles. It is a matter of reproductive health, reproductive rights, and ultimately Reproductive Justice.

                                                                     Signed, February 2010 by the following:

Eleanor Hinton Hoytt, Black Women’s Health Imperative
Jewell Jackson McCabe, President Emeritus of National Coalition of 100 Black Women
Dorothy Roberts, Law Professor of Northwestern University, author of Killing the Black Body
Toni Bond Leonard, Black Women for Reproductive Justice
Rev. Carlton Veazey, President/CEO, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Faye Wattleton, Center for the Advancement of Women
Janice Mathis, Rainbow PUSH
Rev. Penny Willis, Black Church Initiative, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Gloria Steinem, activist
Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize Winner and Activist
Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Women's Research and Resource Center, Spelman College
Women’s Media Center
Julian Bond, Board Chair, NAACP
Loretta Ross, Heidi Williamson, Serena Garcia, and Laura Jimenez, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
Rev. Dr. Susan Newman, Director of Public Policy, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice