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The same folks who profess to fight for the interests of African Americans
in health care, educational and employment opportunities, voter
representation, affirmative action and all those other areas of civic life
for which early civil rights pioneers fought so hard, have abandoned the
cause of justice in reference to respect for the lives of innocent and
defenseless pre-born African-Americans. They have sided with those who use
the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade to deny a whole class of persons the
right to exist.
The irony here is especially tragic since the Constitution of the United
States sanctioned slavery and the "3/5ths clause" which relegated Africans
in America to the status of chattel slavery. It was the Supreme Court that
continued to support this same Constitutional "de-personalization" and the
consequent second class status of people of African descent through two
infamous decisions, namely Dred Scott, which upheld the fugitive slave law,
and Plessy vs. Ferguson, which affirmed the Jim Crow system of segregation
in the south. The famed decision mandating the dismantling of segregation
"with all deliberate speed" in Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka,
KS (the case argued by the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall) was
a significant reversal of the Court's hitherto support of less than equal
protection under the law for persons of African descent in America.
This abandonment by major Black leaders of the newest unprotected class, the
pre-born, was made painfully clear in January of this year when Reverend Al
Sharpton, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the
United States, addressed the NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League)
Pro-Choice America Dinner in Washington, DC. After proudly announcing that
he had just crossed the picket line of pro-life protesters using his now
famous line "it is time for the Christian Right to meet the right
Christians," Sharpton went on to defend his vociferous support of legalized
abortion. He said:
I trust the decisions of women because it is a human
right that Roe vs. Wade decided on. This is not about abortion, this
is about human rights, this is about human dignity, this is about women
having their say-so over their own body and over how they will decide to
proceed with their life, and if America is to be America, we must protect
women's right to choose for themselves.
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