Countering Anti-Choice 'Black Genocide' Lies

By Pamela Merritt, RH Reality Check. Posted February 19, 2008.

What would you expect to pop up on your computer screen if you Googled the words black genocide? Probably several web sites detailing the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide, right? Not quite. Google black genocide and a multitude of web sites indicting Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health service providers for perpetrating genocide on black people fill the computer screen. Most of these web sites claim that service providers are on a racist crusade to kill off black people through abortion and sterilization.

It's tempting to scoff at such claims as the delusional ranting of the lunatic fringe, but that wouldn't be wise. The black genocide charge has shown a staying power not unlike the rumor that drinking carbonated soda laced with Pop Rocks killed that kid from the Life cereal commercials. Unchallenged, claims of genocide become accepted as fact and achieve their goal of discouraging women from seek counseling or treatment from legitimate healthcare providers.

I first encountered the black genocide charge when I began volunteering at a women's shelter that serves homeless pregnant women. My work includes providing information about family planning and reproductive health resources. Almost from the beginning some of my students expressed distrust towards well-known reproductive health service providers. Eventually these students shared that their concerns revolved around rumors that certain service providers aggressively push patients to have abortions or take medicine that results in permanent sterilization. Through family, friends, church and the word on the street these women had been warned that well-known reproductive health service providers in America are organized to perpetrate black genocide.

Motivated more by my student's response than curiosity over the actual charge of black genocide, I did some research and found information on efforts like the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP). The Genocide Awareness Project, which is sponsored by the anti-choice Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, tours college campuses with photos comparing abortion with recognized images of genocide. GAP attempts to link abortion with genocide through the use of visual images and the manipulation of language, challenging the legitimacy of reproductive choice by comparing it to slavery. In this way, GAP reaches out to black communities through a campaign dressed up to look like a black empowerment movement.

In many ways supporters of GAP and like organizations are attempting to reap what others sowed years ago. The American eugenics movement of the 1930s and 1940s claimed to better society by preventing carriers of defective genetic traits from reproducing. Family planning was often code for the compulsory sterilization of so-called lesser people, many from poor disenfranchised groups. It is estimated that some 64,000 Americans were sterilized between 1900 and 1970. Forced sterilization of black women reached its height in the 1950s and 1960s. A trip to the hospital to give birth often resulted in sterilization without consent or the patient's knowledge.

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Pamela Merritt is a staff writer for RH Reality Check, a contributor to the Shakespeare's Sister blog, and a featured contributor on National Public Radio’s (NPR) “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin. Her work has been published in the Chicago Sun-Times, on Salon.com and featured in Salon.com's Broadsheet. Pamela serves as PAC Chair for PROMO (Missouri’s Statewide LGBT Equality Rights Group), is a mentor through Big Sisters and teaches various classes at several shelters in St. Louis, Missouri. She also writes and maintains her personal blog.

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