Some days, I tell you. Today, the Los Angeles Times has a great piece that touches on the rise of crisis pregnancy centers in African-American neighborhoods -- hardly news to Broadsheeters. But the piece also reports that the anti-choice movement has found a new approach to targeting black women: casting their cause as a fight against "black genocide."
This isn't an issue of women's rights but civil rights, they say. Those racist folks over at Planned Parenthood -- or "Klan Parenthood" -- are sneakily campaigning for the elimination of blacks, according to this new breed of anti-abortion activists. They even liken Roe v. Wade to Dred Scott v. Sandford, which deemed blacks undeserving of basic human rights. The Genocide Awareness Project tours college campuses with "giant murals that juxtapose photos of aborted fetuses with images of slaughter in Rwanda," reports the LAT. They even have Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece as a poster woman. (Nevermind that King himself supported the mission of Planned Parenthood's founder.)
Luckily, pro-choice groups like Planned Parenthood have spent years "building ties with black churches and providing subsidized healthcare, such as pap smears and AIDS tests, to poor urban communities," so anti-choicers are greeted with a great degree of skepticism in black communities. As Ann over at Feministing says, "We have long demonstrated that we truly care about a woman's lifelong reproductive health care -- not just about what happens to the fetus if she has an unplanned pregnancy." In what seems total desperation, these anti-choicers are cluelessly hoping to appropriate staples of the pro-choice movement for themselves -- grasping for any weighty political symbol they can get their hands on. So much so that it comes off as inspired, Onion-esque satire. If only.
Like being faced with a raving lunatic on public transportation, it's hard to know exactly what to say in response. Do you twiddle your thumbs, pretending to be oblivious to the ranting or do you attempt to civilly engage in conversation? I say -- from experience -- the best approach is to instead engage with the relatively sane people around you. So, non-crazies, have at it.
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