Inside Congressional caucus briefing on how to block pro-life gains in black community
On May 10 the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus were honorary co-hosts of a wordy briefing entitled, “African Americans’ Attitudes on Abortion, Contraception, and Reproductive, Justice: From Public Opinion to Policymaking,” held at the U.S. Capitol.
- “numerous challenges to accessing quality, affordable reproductive health care… exacerbated by campaigns targeting the African American community”
- “research on the latest attitudes and concerns of African Americans relating to reproductive justice”
- “key messaging as a response to attacks and threats to reproductive rights”
Organizers were obviously alarmed by the inroads pro-lifers have made into the black community, hence the briefing.
What surprised me was how freely they disseminated their findings and thoughts, apparently not taking into consideration (can’t believe they didn’t care) that pro-lifers might also be interested in what they had to say.
Which they were. Out of the 75 or so attendees, at least four were pro-life infiltrators. RSVPs were requested but not mandatory. So our people just showed up.
Day Gardner, president of the power-packed National Black Pro-Life Union and pictured right, was one of those four.
Gardner came away from the briefing shocked.
“What I didn’t expect to hear was that they know the statistics,” Gardner told me in a phone interview. “They already know the abortion rate is very high in the black community. They just don’t care.”
Before the briefing Gardner had thought the key to persuading black political leaders to the pro-life position was educating them on the devastation of abortion in their community.
“But they already know the truth,” said Gardner. “They didn’t bat an eye. Their entire focus now is trying to get blacks who don’t think abortion is an issue to connect it to basic healthcare, because healthcare is a winning issue.”
Why don’t they care? Another black pro-lifer who attended the briefing explained, “What is clearly more important to African-American abortion advocates is their independence, their autonomy. That is their highest value. To them the freedom to live comes second to the freedom to ‘choose.’ What we think is important and what they think is important are completely different. African-Americans are very protective of their rights, and those who support abortion do so in large part because it is a ‘right.'”
The focus of 75% of the briefing, according to the pro-lifers, was the pro-life billboards that have been sprouting up in black neighborhoods around the country, which black abortion supporters abhor and believe are making a big impact.
The first speaker, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, pictured below left, said she was very upset not only by the billboard campaigns but also about the use of the term “genocide” to equate abortion with blacks.
Others throughout the briefing expressed the same concern, because “genocide” frightens blacks and may persuade them against abortion. Lee acknowledged the billboards have had a tremendous effect on women in the black community. They succeed in dividing blacks on the abortion issue, she admitted, and must, therefore, be shut down as soon as they go up.
Lee took credit for the removal of billboards in her California community, which isn’t true. The billboards ran the course of their contract. She said she, herself, called the billboard company.
Lee said to maintain a focus on healthcare, on saying black woman should be trusted to do what they want with their bodies, and to equating denial of contraceptives and abortion with denial of insurance and food.
Organizers distributed a timeline of the billboard campaigns as well as a dossier of the people behind them. These included:
- Ryan and Bethany Bomberger of The Radiance Foundation, creators of the first of many impactful billboards, “Black Children are an Endangered Species”
- Maafa 21 creator Mark Crutcher
- Catherine Davis of Abortion in the Hood, creator of the “Betrayed” billboard campaign
- Brian Follett of Heroic Media, creator of “The Most Dangerous Place in America” and “Every 21 Minutes…” billboard campaigns
- Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., with Priests for Life
- Walter Hoye of the Issues4LifeFoundation, sponsor of the “Black&Beautiful” billboard campaign
Organizers were incensed by the “Every 21 Minutes” billboard, saying it insulted the president…
Belle Taylor-McGhee, Communications Chair of the Trust Black Women Partnership and pictured right, discussed how to defeat the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.
PRENDA is intended to ban abortions on the basis of gender or race. How could blacks oppose it?
Yet Taylor-McGhee maintained this is simply an attempt to shame black women and the Obama administration.
Nancy Beldon, a partner at Belden Russonello Strategists. Beldon handed out “five key points” to oppose billboard campaigns, how to respond to pro-life messaging.
Again, I was quite surprised at the information organizers so freely distributed. A lot of it was inside baseball intel they should not have wanted to get into the hands of pro-lifers. It only helps us know where we are meeting success and how to buffer their attacks.
Belden, pictured left, said it will be necessary to make sure polling generates the answers they need. She bragged she can make polls say what she wants them to say, that it’s all about asking the right questions, in the right sequence, with certain phrasing.
Belden said it is critical to keep the subject on healthcare, not babies.
She said abortion proponents must also accept the fact that many blacks believe there should be some restrictions on abortion. So, “you move them off the circumstances, which you know are going to lose,” she said. She said to move the conversation to reminding people we can’t possibly know all the health reasons and issues going into a decision to abort.
Belden’s group also studied religion as it pertains to African-Americans and abortion. She said blacks are more religious as a group than the general American population. And generally speaking, the more religious people are, the more likely they will oppose abortion. But in her polling she learned abortion isn’t as polarizing in the religious black community than white. “They adopt a religious explanation or idea that fits their preconceived attitude on abortion…. God gave me free will,” said Belden.
The four-part generalized message to defend abortion:
- Frame the issue as the need for quality healthcare and education in the black community.
- Cite disparities with healthcare and education between the cultures.
- Call for an end to the disparities.
- Express the value of self-determination.
To specifically battle “genocide awareness” billboard campaigns:
- Turn “genocide” around: The killing and endangering of our people is really happening by way of substandard healthcare and lack of good education. That’s really the problem.
- Cite historical disparities.
- Call for an end to the disparities.
- Try to switch topics to violence in communities – Trayvon Martin – lack of food, etc. (“What are you doing to help the children already here?”)
A pro-lifer audiotaped the last 20 minutes of the briefing, mostly Belden.
Takeaways:
1. The pro-life community needs to more heavily invest in billboard campaigns in black communities. Donate today to one or more of the organizations listed on the dossier above, or to the NBPLU.
2. Focusing on the babies, that abortion is calculated genocide of the black community, and that most abortions are committed for reasons of convenience are winning issues.
3. Encourage black pastors to preach more strongly against abortion.
4. A fitting verse comes to mind: “The arrogant godless try to throw me off track,” Psalm 119:85. But we won’t let them.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
This explains alot.
I was rather bemused to see how “shocked and appalled” various religious black leaders were over Obama coming out of his evolution closet. Some even went so far as to claim we were days short of a Sodom and Gomorrah moment because of it.
And I thought, “Where were you in 2008? Ever heard of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act?”
What I really find disturbing is Congresswoman Barbara Lee and the discussion of abortion and the black community as if black people are schoolchildren who need the guidance of the more enlightened liberals. I find the whole thing incredibly patronizing, though very typically liberal.
Oh then there’s Barbara Lee, who visited Cuba, got completely taken in by the Castrol brothers, then gushed on how Cubans live better than her constituents. Really Babs?
Sure speaks volumes about you as a congresswoman. Your constituents should have sent you packing years ago.
“What I really find disturbing is Congresswoman Barbara Lee and the discussion of abortion and the black community as if black people are schoolchildren who need the guidance of the more enlightened liberals.”
Considering the monolithic nature of the African-American vote, that would certainly seem to be the case. The national Democratic Party has long been in favor of abortion and gay “marriage” yet the black vote remains unchanged. Unfortunately most black “leaders” are leftists who not only support abortion and gay marriage, but who also convince their people that Republicans are evil racists who hate them, so they have NO CHOICE but to vote Democrat. Even religious blacks who oppose abortion and gay “marriage” end up voting Democrat anyway because they seem to think that the Republicans literally want to kill them.
Well there it is…she said the b word. So we need to keep the subject on the babies. How wonderful it is to see black leaders stand up and speak. We need to support them. Once there is a crack, the wall will break wide open. The Dems are frightened.
Heh. Counter-strategy.
Frame the issue as the need for quality healthcare and education in the black community. Point out that political leaders in the black community wish to frame the genocide of blacks in terms of “quality healthcare.” Point out how perverse and vile this is, and that these leaders have sold out the black community to the pro-abortion lobby like any typical politician.
Cite disparities with healthcare and education between the cultures. Point out that black communities have long been represented and led by Democratic pols who must accept responsibility for these conditions. Point out that having failed, these leaders seem intent on reducing the size of their failures by reducing the size of the populations they’re so proud to represent.
Call for an end to the disparities. Call for an end to disparities between the number of blacks and whites destroyed in the womb. These pols want more black unborn children to die. Framing genocide as “service” to women is an insult to black womanhood. Feminine power doesn’t come from the opportunity to outpace your white sisters in killing your own children.
Express the value of self-determination. Express the value of life. Black on black crime is the scourge of the black community. Is it any wonder, when abortion rates among blacks are so high? Violence in the black community begins at the youngest imaginable age. Why? Is it the virtue of “self-determination” that causes this initiation of blood? Or is it ignorance, coupled with manipulation by the same pols who claim to want to raise blacks into knowledge and empowerment? White politicians have their vices, but few call for more abortions among blacks. They wouldn’t have the nerve. This doesn’t seem to be the case for black pols who, failing to solve their constituents’ socio-economic ills since the progressive war on poverty began in 1964, have determined to abort the problematic population out of existence. Hey, white people have been incredibly cruel to white people. Who should be surprised that some black leaders are just as vile?
Hi John,
Very true.
The real irony is that it is the Democrat Party that has the long history of racism and brutality, as well as opposition to voting and civil rights.
I read of John Kennedy being idolized as some “leader” of civil rights. He in fact, along with then Democrat Senator Lyndon Johnson, opposed the Civil Rights bill of 1960, it was referred to as the g*d* n* bill by Lyndon Johnson, because Kennedy planned to run for president and did not want to offend the Democrat leadership, who opposed civil rights.
LBJ would eventually pass a civil and voting rights bill, but only because Republicans came to his aid. Democrats were too busy filibustering.
At every opportunity John I point these inconvenient facts out to liberal black columnists.
One responded by saying he didn’t want to be reminded that Democrat Senator Byrd was a klansman. Well gee buster, you sure like to remind everyone what Rush Limbaugh, then an obscure radio host, said 40 years ago, and apologized for. I would have a bigger problem with an ex-klansman in the US senate myself.
This blind loyalty to the Democrats just boggles my mind.
Hi Rasquel,
I think one question we need to ask is what are these people so afraid of? Can’t black people take in a lot of information and opinions, process it, and come to their own conclusions? What’s the concern here? Maybe that black people will take in this information, process it, and come to conclusions very unfavorable to their “leadership”?
Maybe the black community will realize their “leaders” are leading them to the slaughter?
Their “leaders” put blind loyalty to the Democrats first and foremost?
Hmmm, maybe I’d be a little nervous too.
The article spelled “cite” as “site”. (Site is a location.)
schools
Some points we have not read here is the infectious disease and other health issues and implications associated with illicit sexual activity. A married male and female that are partnered for life in a faithful, unadulterous marriage do not… aquire a sexually transmitted disease provided they have not had previous sexual partners. The cost to support illicit sex is incredible. There are huge industries profiting from this. If you think of such things as birth control pills, condoms, IUD’s birth control injections, latex gloves in clinics and hospitals used to prevent the spread of HIV,. Educators to teach “Safe Sex” and most all treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and treatment of those unable to conceive due to damage to the reproductive system as a result of infection. And also the abortion industry with all its negative effects, the list could go on and on……The bottom line in this, you can argue the theology of Biblical Truth on the subject of sexual morality forever, but the fact will still remain, sex outside the marriage of one man and one women has serious consequences, which in turn costs the American taxpayers and others million and trillions of dollars that could be better spent elsewhere. Indoctrination of the very young in public schools that alternative lifestyles are OK is an abomination if not criminal…. and certainly is violation against the beliefs of most of the great religions of the world.
Preachers who are not addressing this from the pulpit and educators in the classroom are failing our young people and all people.
I really love how the tips these folks are giving out essentially boil down to, “Change the subject, as hard as you can, as fast as you can, all the time. Whatever you do, don’t talk about abortion while you are defending it. Especially don’t talk about abortion’s direct impact on a woman and the aborted child.” Scott Klusendorf has it right: stick to the unborn in a debate. Don’t let any bunny trails drag you away from the unborn.
…which has the advantage of being honest, since abortion only occurs because people want to be rid of the unborn child. It’s not an abstract “health care issue” — it’s a little feller/gal who, were it not for the abortion, would be born. Duh.
I know, Alice. That’s why they will they the word choice about ten times more than they will say abortion.
Thomas, thanks, changed.
How quaint. Dems are getting mad that some blacks are wandering off the plantation, so-to-speak. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose.
Lee acknowledged the billboards have had a tremendous effect on women in the black community. They succeed in dividing blacks on the abortion issue, she admitted, and must, therefore, be shut down as soon as they go up.
Yes, of course. We can’t have people thinking for themselves, now, can we? Good grief. This mentality reminds me of that of a slave plantation owner. :(
When they say, “Cite disparities with healthcare and education between the cultures,” they really mean, “Cite disparities with healthcare and education between the RACES.” Of course, to say what they really mean would be, gasp, RACIST. These people must be schizophrenic. They can’t seem to decide who to hate more…black babies or white adults. Also, the point about Dem pols “representing” black communitites is right on. To change anything would be to admit the colossal failure of Democrat politicians to deliver on the myriad promises made to black communities in every election.
The national Democratic Party has long been in favor of abortion and gay “marriage” yet the black vote remains unchanged. Unfortunately most black “leaders” are leftists who not only support abortion and gay marriage, but who also convince their people that Republicans are evil racists who hate them, so they have NO CHOICE but to vote Democrat.
John, you have to admit there are some racist Republicans.
Xalisae, I left the plantation long ago, and that includes the black church. I will vote for anyone I please, and if that makes me a sellout and an “Uncle Tom,” so be it.
I really love how the tips these folks are giving out essentially boil down to, “Change the subject, as hard as you can, as fast as you can, all the time. Whatever you do, don’t talk about abortion while you are defending it. Especially don’t talk about abortion’s direct impact on a woman and the aborted child.” Scott Klusendorf has it right: stick to the unborn in a debate. Don’t let any bunny trails drag you away from the unborn.
^ Exactly what I was thinking.
(apparently, Planned Parenthood won’t let their representatives debate him anymore. Not very surprising)
Hi phillymiss,
Indeed there are racist Republicans. There are racist Independents. There are racist people of every race.
However only the Democrat Party has a long history of actively terrorizing and legislating black people into second class citizenship.
As for being called an ”Uncle Tom”, that would be an honor. Uncle Tom was actually Josiah Henson, an escaped slave, a brave man and a great leader. The first I ever heard the truth about Henson was when I was watching “The Jeffersons” years ago. What a sad commentary on our education system.
I feel ya, phillymiss. As a “white Hispanic” (LOL!) who has never been a Dem but leans libertarian/conservative, I have never been “on the plantation”, and I’ve been called an “Uncle Tom” outright by other minorities for my positions. The instance I’m speaking of was due to my position on immigration reform, but I’ve been called the same for being a conservative/Pro-Life woman, also (which I don’t consider a “minority” issue. Women:men make up about a 50:50 split. That’s not “minority” vote territory).
John, you have to admit there are some racist Republicans.
Phillymiss,
I think John makes a good point and you do too, but racist Republicans certainly are not the majority, are they?
Personally, I would love to see a morally conservative black candidate for president and some day if we are lucky, there will be one; Obama’s just not THE ONE. That message should be brought to the black community, IMHO.
Hi X,
Not to change the subject but perhaps as a “white Hispanic” you could straighten this out. George Zimmerman was a “white Hispanic” and is now “white” with Hispanic ancestry. He also has a black grand or great grandparent. So is he a black/white Hispanic or a black/Hispanic white man?
Seems our nation’s media can’t quite decide his racial makeup, or need to alter it to fit their racial template.
We had a morally conservative black candidate in this race. His name is Herman Cain. He’s a successful businessman, a huge pro-life donor (despite a few misspeaks here and there, I am totally reassured on his pro-life creds), and whip smart when dealing with money, which is something we could really use in the Oval Office right about now. And I believe we all remember the hatchet job the media did on him, in utterly shameful but entirely typical fashion.
I’m still bitter about this. I was so much more excited for him than I ever was for Santorum. And infinitely more than I am for Romney.
ME TOO, ALICE!!! I WANT HERMAN CAIN BACK! I MISS MY MAN CAIN!!! ;_;
Mary-
A black grandparent is not enough to claim “blackness” if the media is trying to manipulate your actions to seem racist. Sorry. :(
Also this.
“We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” – Margaret Sanger. They still fool themselves and don’t look at the actual results of what they are doing.
Indeed there are racist Republicans. There are racist Independents. There are racist people of every race.
Well, I don’t want to act like I’m an expert on black people, but many, black people HATE Republicans and think that they’re equal to the Klan. Whenever some Republican idiot does something like circulate an e-mail depicting Obama as a monkey, etc., it just adds fuel to the fire. Personally I think there are good people in both parties.
phillymiss,
have you introduced those people to Alfonzo Rachel?
Hi phillymiss,
How ironic they relate Republicans to the Klan since the Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party and Republicans couldn’t have belonged to the klan if they wanted to.
Yes displaying Obama as a monkey is despicable. So is portraying George Bush as Hitler.
So is calling Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann vile sexist names.
BTW, Democrat congresswomen Sheila Jackson-Lee and Jan Shahansky would not condemn this sexism when directly asked to do so.
I agree, good and bad in both parties.
phillymiss @ 2:19,
You’re one of our resident experts. :)
I’m betting that the blacks who really HATE Republicans have never MET a Republican in person. I wouldn’t have thought that possible a few years ago, but then I found out that there are people who comment at Jill’s who have never met a Catholic in their life, so there you go. I can tell you from my experience that lots of Northerners have never MET anyone in the Klan, much less belonged to it.
Is anyone surprised by this tactic? They clearly have to turn the spin on, since the facts don’t back them.
Shhhhhhh ~ don’t tell them that the new President of Colorado Right to Life is a black man.