Leading black pro-life advocates are not happy that Lamar advertising company took down a billboard a pro-life group put up in the SoHo district of New York City raising awareness about the high rates of abortions on black children.
The pro-life group Life Always paid for the billboard, to try to draw attention to the fact that abortions kill 300,000 black unborn children annually. In fact, new data put out by the CDC Thursday indicates black babies are victims of abortions at a much higher rate than their white or Hispanic counterparts.
Responding to complaints from abortion advocates, the outdoor advertising company that sold the space to the pro-life group for the billboard said on Thursday that it would remove the four-story sign. It also cited alleged complaints from the employees at the Mexican restaurant located on the bottom floor of the several story building bearing the ad that Lamar said were facing harassment but that local media outlets could not verify.
Catherine Davis of the National Black Prolife Coalition told LifeNews.com the incident will be one pro-life black leaders will touch on at a press conference on Monday, and she complained the billboard “was pulled in an attempt to silence that debate” on abortion.
She blamed “Al Sharpton, who continually defends the epidemic of abortion in the black community,” for being one of the primary people leading protests against the billboard.
“The media has dubbed New York the abortion capitol of the nation. So where else should the debate take place than in the city where more black babies are aborted than are born alive,” Davis said. “Sixty percent of the abortions in New York City are performed on black women. That is not an accident, and we believe Planned Parenthood Founder, Margaret Sanger’s ‘Negro Project’ is why.”
Davis said, “Black women have been targeted by the abortion industry since its inception, and New York provides the snapshot of what abortion targeting looks like when abortion supporters succeed.”
Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., joined in on complaining about Lamar’s actions.
“The time has come for America to come to grips with the reality that abortion is hurting our women and destroying the Black community,” she said. “Nationwide, the abortion rate in the African American community is three times more than our representation in the population. This debate cannot be silenced by the removal of a billboard. We will shout truth from the rooftops if need be.”
“It is an outrageous act of censorship that this billboard was taken down,” Dr King said. “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,” King continued. “Some people are angry about the billboard, but that anger is misplaced. We should all be upset and heartbroken that so many African-American women have bought into the lie that abortion will solve their problems. Legal abortion has been with us for 38 years, and the problems facing the African-American community have not gone away.”
King concluded: “The message of this billboard is totally accurate. The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb! It’s a travesty of justice that it is being taken down.”
Dean Nelson, Vice President of Underserved Outreach for CareNet, the nation’s largest network of pregnancy centers, also condemned the removal of the billboard.
“When the mourning is heard, we will continue to help women in New York City and across America to have access to free services that will help them keep and care for their children,” he said of those women who have abortions they regret.
he billboard follows a December city health department report showing 41 percent of pregnancies in New York City ended in abortion in 2009. Blacks had the highest number of abortions with 40,798, the report indicated.
ACTION: Contact Lamar advertising to protest its decision at https://www.lamar.com/Contact
