But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. I did not know it was against me they devised schemes, saying:
"Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more."
– Jeremiah 11:19
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| "The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb." |
This is the billboard that caused so much controversy in New York City – not a sexist depiction of women used in a sales pitch; not a gratuitous depiction of violence; it does not contain obscene language.
All of those are commonplace in billboard advertising – as if that makes such practices excusable. But this pro-life billboard contained none of those images or messages. So why were some New Yorkers so offended by the message of this billboard? What explains the intensity of the reactions by pro-abortion advocates?
A New York Daily News called it a "racial anti-abortion billboard", and quoted the Rev. Al Sharpton as saying, "The billboard was offensive, especially during Black History Month, and I had intended to hold a press conference Friday in front of the billboard to protest the message of racial profiling and against a woman's right to choose."
Under intense political pressure the sign came down.
Symbolically, the message was "aborted"; the child was silenced.
The message which the sign attempted to communicate is that there is a strong link between abortion and eugenics. This has been true historically and it is still true today.
No woman wants to think that her individual "choice" of abortion is somehow linked to a broader eugenic campaign. Perhaps this explains the reaction of some women to this image. The intention is not to point fingers at individuals and to cast blame. We are all victims of the culture of death in which we live.
Whether through the use of contraception or through our promiscuous sexual behavior, we all contribute to the spread of this culture and the resulting loss of morality and of innocent life. Who shall cast the first stone?
“It is an outrageous act of censorship that this billboard was taken down,” said Dr. Alveda King in a press release Friday. “This billboard should be posted in every city of the country. And it should provoke outrage in the African-American community-not because it is racist, but because of the truth it reveals; the truth that is being kept from the African-American community.”
“Black people in New York and all over the country should be outraged at the numbers of black babies we lose every single day to abortion. An astonishing 60 percent of African-American pregnancies in the five boroughs of New York City end in abortion. That’s unfathomable!”
Many are not aware of the history of Planned Parenthood. Its founder, Margaret Sanger, was clear about her pro-eugenic views. She strongly believed in "population control" and held racist views which led to her creating "women's health clinics" to provide contraception in areas which were poor and non-white.
Along with eugenicists Clarence Gamble she started the "Negro Project" in 1939.
According to the project proposal, widely believed to have been written by Gamble, “The mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the [population] increase among Negroes…is from that portion…least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear children properly.”Then as now Planned Parenthood targets minority neighborhoods. And then as now they don't allow their funds to be "diluted" by providing general health services.
The project was to hire three or four “colored Ministers, preferably with social service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities” to travel through the South and propagandize for birth control. As the project proposal stated, “The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal.”
In a remarkably frank letter to Gamble, Sanger wrote that “We do not want Word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Gamble in turn proposed that the ministers enlist the aid of black physicians and attempt to organize a “Negro Birth Control Committee” in each community. In a private memo concerning the “Colored Steering Committee,” Gamble wrote that “There is great danger that [the project] will fail because the Negroes think it a plan for extermination. Hence let’s appear to let the colored run it.…”
Despite Gamble’s professed concern for the health and well-being of the indigent Negroes he was targeting, he clashed with South Carolina’s Public Health Director who wanted to provide general health services along with the contraceptive agenda being pushed by Sanger and Gamble. Gamble wrote Sanger that he did not want his funds to be “diluted with a lot of general health work.”
In order to get the general public to buy into their agenda, PP presents themselves as helping the poor. They use sex to sell their message by encouraging a promiscuous lifestyle. They claim that the contraceptives – that they peddle like snake oil – will allow all of us to lead a carefree promiscuous lifestyle, and that this will bring us happiness. What this lifestyle really leads to is an increase in sexually transmitted diseases and a spiritual emptiness.
And when contraception fails, as it does over one million times a year in the United States, then Planned Parenthood stands ready to provide the ultimate in contraceptive "choice". The "choice" to terminate the life of an unborn child.
We are being lied to and deceived. The sexual "freedom" which we are sold is not freedom at all – instead it is a slavery to our baser instincts. This depravity gnaws away at our closest personal relationships and weakens our marriages.
True freedom lies in surrendering our lives to God. The Apostle St. Paul says, "for when I am weak, then I am strong." It is when we stop trying to run our lives in opposition to God and finally surrender and become servants of God that He will give us true strength to lead our lives according to His will.
Chastity is a virtue. And abstinence strengthens the body and soul. It requires no pharmacist prescription to abstain; only earnest prayer to God. Nothing could be more natural or more healthy. Being a virgin is not something to be ashamed of, but something to be proud of. Marriage is not simply a legal contract, but a God given sacrament.
Every child is a gift from God.
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Related articles:
I came across this quote from pro-abortion (and pro-eugenics?) Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg:
ReplyDelete"Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."
Source – NY Times interview 2009:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
The Catholic League called the removal of the billboard a "fascist attack". http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=40503
ReplyDeleteAnother sad day for Americans, and that Times interview is appalling, also.
Hi MJ. I'm not a big fan of Catholic League president Bill Donohue. I don't think using hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric is very Christ-like. I know that I have been guilty in the past of doing just those same sort of things, but as I grow and mature in my faith I am making a conscious effort to avoid those types of statements.
ReplyDeletePope Benedict XVI made this point when he endorsed the use of the internet by the laity to spread the faith. At the same time he warned that we should not measure our success simply by how popular our message is. Jesus Christ is our ultimate example. He did not change his teachings in order to attract more followers.
Donohue could have made the same point by saying that this action demonstrates the "intolerance" of abortion supporters. And pointing out that this is a form of "censorship" as Alveda King did. But throwing out a loaded term like "fascism" only serves to polarize public opinion.
That said, there are times when Donohue does serve to get the message out that Christians – and Catholics in particular – are under attack by the culture. At times he seems like the only one vigorously defending the Church against "the last acceptable prejudice".
Some more thoughts.
ReplyDeleteAs I was looking at the picture of the billboard being taken down, I began to see the image of the child as representing the fetus and the crane as representing the abortionist's instrument in the act of destroying the life of the unborn child.
I also gave some more thought to the biblical quote at the top of the article from Jeremiah. The image of the "gentle lamb led to the slaughter" could apply equally well to the mother and the unborn child as they are warmly welcomed at an abortion clinic.
"Let us destroy the tree with its fruit" describes the agenda of the pro-abortion/pro-eugenic Planned Parenthood. Abortion destroys the life of the unborn child (the fruit) but also destroys the life of the mother (the tree). The tree could also refer to African Americans as a whole.
When I use the term "eugenics" in association with abortion, I have no intention of being inflammatory. I stay away from the term "genocide" because I think that it is misleading. While some advocates of population control may have a genocidal agenda, the majority realize that they can only win the public relations war by limiting their "success" to a reduction in the birth rate among what they consider to be "undesirable" elements of the population.
In this way they are able to gain the voluntary cooperation of the targeted victims. In a democratic society, this is much preferable to a program of forced abortion and forced sterilization – as practiced in China. Instead the targeted victim is pressured economically and socially and led to make the preferred "choice" – "like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter."
MJ. I found a very good article that provides an objective analysis of the disturbing statement from pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg.
ReplyDelete----
Excerpts from Abortion, Eugenics and the Meaning of Margaret Sanger:
There is a disquieting reason Ruth Bader Ginsburg's defenders have been denying, however implausibly, the clear meaning of the Supreme Court justice's recent remarks about the history of abortion law, and that reason is this: Historically, eugenics has always been a significant component of the intellectual underpinnings – and political impetus – of the movement to legalize abortion.
This legacy is glossed over by the rhetoric of today's "pro-choice" tacticians, who couch their arguments almost exclusively as a question of a woman's inalienable right to control her body and to make her own reproductive decisions. This reasoning carried the day, at least with the U.S. Supreme Court, which rendered it a constitutional right. But, from the early days of the national discourse on this topic, the idea of feminist empowerment was coupled with the less noble rationale of eugenics, that disturbing dogma that seeks to improve the human race through selective mating – and by controlling who has the opportunity to be born.
[...]
[Jesse] Jackson's mother was undoubtedly the kind of woman Margaret Sanger had in mind when she proposed raising the quality of life for Southern blacks by aggressively pushing birth control in that part of the country. Sanger was hardly alone. In the 1970s, Jackson would often refer to the circumstances of his own birth: "I was born out of wedlock," he once wrote, "and against the advice that my mother received from her doctor, and therefore abortion is a personal issue for me."
In 1977, Jackson penned an essay for the National Right to Life News in which he called abortion The Question – the italics were his – of the 20th century. He meant ending abortion. "Human beings cannot give or create life by themselves, it is really a gift from God," Jackson wrote. "Therefore, one does not have the right to take away (through abortion) that which he does not have the ability to give."
[...]
By the mid-1980s, when Jackson was indulging himself with visions of a black politician from Chicago entering the White House – himself, not Barack Obama – he switched sides in this great debate. He said all the right things, this newly indoctrinated national Democrat, but it didn't sound quite as persuasive.
The new Jesse Jackson said that abortion is acceptable because "it is not right to impose private, religious and moral positions on public policy." The old Jesse Jackson maintained: "If one accepts the position that life is private, and therefore you have the right to do with it as you please, one must also accept the conclusion of that logic. That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private."
Hello Michael,
ReplyDeleteThe more I know the more I appreciate life, though my short experience I can tell you that new-born child is always a blessing, even when future looks uncertain.
Right now I'm learning more about Chastity, a concept that seems surreal on this modern society. But I do want to do it, I´ll pray for being strong.
It seems to me that the media is focus in all the madness of the world, so much that we have forgotten the true face of Religion and people.
Hi Ride. The message that the secular culture delivers to us with regards to chastity is perverse to the extreme. It portrays chastity as a vice rather than a virtue. The culture tells us that if we do not engage in all sorts of sexual activities which are condemned by the Church, then we will do psychological harm to ourselves by "repressing" our natural urges. I'm sure you are familiar with this message.
ReplyDeleteThe flaw in this bizarre logic is immediately apparent if the same thinking is applied to any other area of moral teaching. If we did not manage our appetite for food we would find ourselves becoming grossly obese. If we did not manage our emotions, we would not be able to have personal relationships.
Chastity is not a matter of "repressing" our sexual desires, but a matter of managing those desires and bringing them under the control of our will. It is a matter of utilizing the free choice that God has given us to express our sexuality in a way that honors our devotion to Him.
If we place love of God above all else, then the rest falls into place naturally. If we remain faithful in our love of God, then we naturally will lead chaste lives. This would not seem like such a difficult thing if we were not constantly bombarded by the culture with messages to the contrary.
If you have time, you can read what St. Thomas of Aquinas teaches about chastity here:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3151.htm
In a recent statement, Pope Benedict XVI said:
ReplyDelete"Abortion resolves nothing; rather it kills the child, destroys the woman and blinds the conscience of the child's father, often devastating family life.”
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-tells-vatican-academy-that-abortion-resolves-nothing/
Archbishop Dolan of New York posted about this billboard on his blog. (His post is dated Feb 25, which is the same day I posted my article.)
ReplyDelete----
Unpleasant Truths
"So why has the billboard suddenly been taken down? What was it that moved many of our elected officials to condemn this ad and call for the gag order. Are they claiming that free speech is a right enjoyed only by those who favor abortion or their pet causes? Do they believe that unpleasant and disturbing truths should not be spoken? Or are they afraid that when people are finally confronted with the reality of the horror of abortion, and with the toll that it is taking in our city, particularly in our African-American community, that they will be moved to defend innocent, unborn, human life?"
Watch the film Maafa21 - see why they seek to censor this message - http://www.maafa21.com
ReplyDelete@Anon - I wrote an article on the film Maafa21. You can find it here:
ReplyDeleteMaafa 21 Black Genocide In The 21st Century
I just noticed that I used "genocide" in the title of the Maafa21 article. That's because it is part of the title of the film. As I mentioned before, I think using the word "genocide" confuses the issue. In contrast, understanding the meaning of the word "eugenics" and its history is empowering. Once we understand the goals of eugenics, then we can understand how contraception and abortion is part of that.
ReplyDeleteWe can also see why Planned Parenthood promotes promiscuity. And in contrast, we can see the importance of chastity and strong families. We can begin to understand that such seemingly contradictory things like Playboy Magazine and Ms. Magazine are actually working together to promote the eugenics agenda.