Killing Them Softly

Note: This article was originally submitted to run in the Daily Barometer on 7/16/08.

Killing Them Softly

by Dan Fitzpatrick

I’m surprised the black community in Portland is not up in arms right now, as 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, and while this alone typically is enough to stir up controversy, the process has become even more heated because at the end of June, the construction company set to build the center pulled out of the project following continuous protests from pro-life groups and activists.

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 a nominal respect for free speech, but have little respect 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 blacks, and the only reaction is dismissing it all as an exercise of free speech.

It’s certainly much easier on the mind and soul to pretend that Planned Parenthood going in is a good thing, but the facts tell a different story. The Oregonian article calls the company a non-profit (this despite the $336 million they receive in taxpayer money and their $115 million per year profit margin) that provides 38 percent of their patients with contraception, 29 percent with STD treatment, and 3 percent with abortions.

If their biggest seller is allegedly-effective contraception (which is meant to prevent disease and pregnancy), then why do a third of their patients come in for STD treatments or abortions? Planned Parenthood essentially operates as a racket: it sells people contraception that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, so when it inevitably fails their customers can come back 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. Planned Parenthood claims to sell people sexual responsibility—use contraception because it’s the responsible thing to do; abort your unplanned child because it’s the responsible thing to do; etc.
But, just as latent smugness has bled into Oregonians, so subtle bigotry has leaked into feminism and the abortion industry.

It can be traced back to Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League (which became Planned Parenthood). 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 is little surprise that 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 their fertility and undergo abortions to prevent them from ever having a child.

Sanger herself seemed to admit as much in a 1957 interview, saying that "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 Planned Parenthood’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 Planned Parenthood 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 loneliness grew within her due to her mother’s emotional absence, Rebecca began having sex at age 13 (with her mother’s blessing) and, wonder of wonders, 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."

And yet, in Northeast Portland, the architect continues with 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 Planned Parenthood 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 imagine Margaret Sanger is smiling from hers.