Planned Parenthood is ‘lying’ about MLK, Alveda King charges

Jan 20, 2010 / 04:36 am

Dr. Alveda King, pro-life advocate and niece of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has attacked Planned Parenthood, saying its comments about the civil rights leader amount to “lying.” She charged that the organization misrepresents Rev. King’s reception of the Margaret Sanger Award.

“I hate to sound combative, but they do this every year,” she told CNA in a Tuesday phone interview.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) released a statement saying the civil rights leader had received the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Margaret Sanger Award in 1966.

The award is given to recognize “individuals’ excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and rights” and is named for the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood said that Dr. King fought for racial justice, fair wages for workers and “quality health care for all” in its Jan. 18 statement. The organization said that Planned Parenthood works “in the tradition of Dr. King’s call for equity in health care” by erasing “disparities” in the health care system that disproportionately affect “people of color.”

The organization, the nation’s largest abortion provider, claimed that more than 90 percent of the health care provided at its health centers is preventive and includes breast exams, Pap tests and contraception.

PPFA then quoted what it described as the comments Dr. King wrote “in accepting the Sanger Award.”

'We had confidence that when we awakened the nation to the immorality and evil of inequality, there would be an upsurge of conscience followed by remedial action.'

Speaking to CNA on Tuesday, Alveda King commented: “Dr. King did not attend that ceremony, he did not write that speech.”

Rather, she explained, his wife Coretta Scott King delivered the speech.

Alveda King questioned the authorship of the text at several points because of language she found implausible.

“There’s one page in there that says something about ‘the plight of the male ego.’ No male will say that,” she explained to CNA.

King connected the falsehoods she saw about the Margaret Sanger Award with the “lies” she said are told by abortion advocates.

“They lie, they lied to me. They told me that my baby was a blob of tissue, that its removal would not hurt any more than removing a tooth. But it did hurt much more, and it was much more devastating.”

“Abortion isn’t health care, it is a death warrant for babies,” she stated.

King referred CNA to her pamphlet “An analysis of the PPH MLK Brochure,” available in the African-American Outreach section of the Priests for Life website. She also referred to her comments on her blog at PriestsForLife.org.

There in a Tuesday entry she asked rhetorically whether a man who “warned against the evils of infanticide in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail,” whose father was “staunchly pro-life,” and who saw injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, could support “abortion and killer chemicals called ‘safe’ birth control.”

“They lied to my uncle, Dr. King. How can the dream survive if we murder our children?” she asked.