CNA Staff, Jul 8, 2020 / 13:00 pm
American hip-hop singer Kanye West has denounced the nation's largest abortion provider as racist and demonic after announcing an unexpected run for the Oval Office on July 4.
Excerpts and a summary of an interview with Forbes magazine were published on Wednesday, four days after West announced on Twitter that he would run for president.
"Planned Parenthood [clinics] have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the devil's work," said West, referring to allegations that the nation's largest abortion chain intentionally focuses on offering abortions to women of color.
Nia Martin-Robinson, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's director of Black Leadership and Engagement rejected West's assertion, telling celebrity news website The Blast that "Black women are free to make our own decisions about our bodies and pregnancies, and want and deserve to have access to the best medical care available."
Martin-Robinson said that "any insinuation that abortion is Black genocide is offensive and infantalizing," and that black communities are more threatened due to a "lack of access to quality, affordable health care, police violence and the criminalization of reprooductive health care" by pro-life activists.
Planned Parenthood performs approximately 345,000 abortions in the United States each year. In 2016, the Guttmacher Institute found that Black women had 28% of the nation's abortions, despite being approximately 14% of the population.
Planned Parenthood was founded by noted eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who once said that "before eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for birth control. Like the advocates of birth control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit."
Planned Parenthood has come under renewed scrutiny regarding racial issues in recent weeks. The CEO of Planned Parenthood's largest affiliate, Planned Parenthood Greater New York, recently left the company after complaints that she mistreated Black employees and had a "Trumpian" style of leadership.
In Texas, Bishop Daniel Flores condemned the organization on July 4 after they used a racial slur in its attack ad against a pro-life state senator of Mexican descent. Flores said he was "not surprised" by the attack on the pro-life record of state Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr.
For his part, West affirmed that he is "pro-life, because I'm following the word of the Bible," and that he is against the death penalty. Previously, the rapper, who has released an album titled Jesus is King, has spoken out in favor of abortion rights.
During the interview, West offered less mainstream views on other topics, especially vaccines. The singer said he believes a coronavirus vaccine could be part of a global plot to implant microchips in the human population during the discussion of his political motivations and ambitions.
West said that he had contracted coronavirus in February, and that he was not in favor of a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine, or any vaccines, and voiced his support for a number of conspiracy theories on the subject.
"It's so many of our children that are being vaccinated and paralyzed… So when they say the way we're going to fix Covid is with a vaccine, I'm extremely cautious. That's the mark of the beast," said West, referring apparently to an interpretation of Revelation 13:16-17 prominent among some vaccine opponents.
West further also said that "they" - he did not specify who - had a plan to implant microchips in the global population and "to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can't cross the gates of heaven." He also said he believes that the coronavirus was sent from God as a punishment to humanity.
"We pray. We pray for the freedom. It's all about God. We need to stop doing things that make God mad," said West.
In the past, West has spoken openly about his struggles with bipolar disorder, a condition for which he has said he is under a doctor's care. On the cover of his 2018 album "Ye", West included the statement "I hate being bi-polar it's awesome."
Regarding his presidential ambitions, West said that he would work to "reinstate in God's state, in God's country, the fear and love of God in all schools and organizations," and that he believes that the devil is behind spikes in the suicide and murder rate in his hometown of Chicago.
"The human beings working for the devil removed God and prayer from the schools," said West, adding "that means more drugs, more murders, more suicide."
West said that if President Donald Trump were not the incumbent, he would run as a Republican, but that instead he will run as an independent candidate. While he is no longer a vocal Trump supporter, West said that Trump "is the closest president we've had in years to allowing God to still be part of the conversation."
At the 2015 MTV Music Video Awards, while accepting the lifetime achievement Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, West announced that he would be running for president in 2020. Following Trump's election in 2016, West amended his plans to say he would now run in 2024.
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In the interview with Forbes, he stated that he believes that "God appoints the president" and that if he were to win in 2020, it would be the result of God appointing him as president.