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EDITORIAL

Planned Parenthood recently opened a new, 50,000-square-foot, big-box abortion store in Stapleton.

Gated and nicely landscaped, the facility is the latest façade erected by an industry that has operated behind veneers, euphemisms, and outright falsehoods for its entire existence.

One of that industry's ugly truths, though, is now piercing the public relations veil it has so carefully woven.

What's not new is the fact that the killing tools of abortionists are as aimed at blacks today as were the fire hoses of segregationists 50 years ago.

Taking more African-American lives than gun violence, heart disease, cancer, and AIDS combined, abortion seems to have targeted blacks in a way that can only make remaining Ku Klux Klan members smile.

For every three living African-Americans, there is one who has been aborted.

The numbers speak for themselves.

According to the abortion industry's own Alan Guttmacher Institute, black women are 4.8 times more likely to have an abortion than white women.

African Americans comprise about 13 percent of the population, yet receive 37 percent of all abortions. [CDC]

And like Planned Parenthood's new Colorado mega-center, most abortion businesses are located in or adjacent to predominantly minority neighborhoods.

The racism in Planned Parenthood's history is undeniable.

America's largest abortion provider was founded by Margaret Sanger, a woman who wanted what she termed "more children from the fit, less from the unfit."

She once described aboriginal Australians as "just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development." She had no problem speaking to a Klan meeting.

That racism still exists in Planned Parenthood is also undeniable.

Earlier this year in taped conversations, seven different Planned Parenthood offices across the country were willing to accept donations for the sole and explicit purpose of aborting black babies – until their willingness to accept those donations was exposed.

The connection between abortion and racism is not certain people are somehow not fully human. Like racism, abortion allows us to treat people inhumanely if it makes our lives easier. And like racism, abortion provides a sense of justification for actions we know in our hearts are wrong.

The unborn are obviously easier to discriminate against than any group of born humans. They cannot march. They cannot protest. They are invisible – until they appear on a sonogram or their remains are reassembled on an abortionist's table.

Even in death, they are anonymously incinerated or sometimes just bagged and tossed in a dumpster. It would almost seem like the aborted unborn never existed – if we didn't go to such great lengths to end their existences.

Since Colorado became the first state to liberalize its abortion law in 1967, over 50 million Americans have gone missing. These aborted missing ones were brutalized and eliminated because of who they were. They are now gone because too many of us believed the lies that unborn babies aren't really babies and human lives don't begin at their beginnings.

I know. Two of those 50 million were my own children.

Defending the unborn has become the civil rights cause of this generation.

I say this not just because abortion attacks the black community, but because it attacks the most innocent and helpless among us.

Certainly, the numbers tell us that blacks, Hispanics, and the disabled in the womb are more at risk, but anyone with unborn status is subject to abortion's lethal and inherently discriminatory victimization.

On Aug. 25, at Martin Luther King Park at East 38th Avenue and Newport Street in Denver, I will speak on behalf of these victims at Light in the Darkness, a peaceful prayer vigil and rally. I will join [other] people of goodwill in standing witness against the activities taking place only a block away at Planned Parenthood's new Stapleton site. Beginning at 7:30 p.m. at East 38th Avenue and Newport Street, the program will include speakers, music, and prayer and will conclude with a silent, prayerful march around Planned Parenthood's building. Further information is available online at www.thesolidarityinstitute.com.

My uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote, "The Negro cannot win if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety."

My grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. was the head of a very pro-life family. My father Rev. A. D. King was a champion for youth and children's rights. Though they have all "gone on to glory," I believe they would join me in saying now that America cannot win if we are willing to sacrifice the lives of our children for immediate personal comfort and safety.

Planned Parenthood, which gave an award to my uncle before it revealed its abortion agenda and which told me that one of my children was just a clump of cells, has lied to my family for the last time.

The abortion industry, which profits through cruelty and deceit, can't hide the truth, no matter how many new facades it constructs.

And you and I, who lived for years with the comfort of denial, can no longer do so. Fifty million missing won't let us.

Alveda King is a pastoral associate of Priests for Life and the niece of Martin Luther King Jr.

For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org/africanamerican. [By Alveda King, Updated: 08/21/2008, guest commentary, http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_10268350]