We are saying that we are determined to be men, we are determined to be people. We are saying … that we are God’s children. — Martin Luther King, Jr. the night before his assassination

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” was inspiring. It inspired abortionist Dr. Willie Parker to take the lives of the unborn, he said in a recent Rolling Stone interview. Parker sees himself as an agent for Christian compassion. It is the latest in abortion providers’ attempts to justify taking human life.

Parker hasn’t always performed abortions. As an obstetrician, Parker first referred women to other clinics for abortions. But working at a clinic in Hawaii for indigent people made him rethink his choice. It was then that he said Dr. King’s speech inspired him to perform abortions. Parker added that Dr. King’s speech made him want to fight injustice and oppression. It’s hard to believe. But Parker connects the taking of human life to the civil rights and freedom from slavery. Blacks, he says, feel the sting of slavery when they are told they can’t have an abortion.

Dr. King’s niece, Alveda C. King, objects. She said that abortion conflicted with her uncle’s teachings. “Dr. King would never have agreed with the violent violation of the civil rights of the millions of aborted babies, and Planned Parenthood’s subsequent blitz of women’s health problems related to chemical and artificial birth control methods,” she wrote. “This conclusion leads me to remind my readers that I too have a dream. It’s in my genes. How can the dream survive if we murder the children?”

Christian Compassion?

But Parker insists that abortion is the compassionate choice. “I felt deeply [abortion] was a service my patients needed to have.” Parker claims in his book, Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice, that when he takes the life of an unborn child he sees himself doing it for God. He is showing “Christian compassion not by proxy, but with my own capable hands.”

Perhaps he hasn’t read Psalm 139. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Ps. 139:13), and “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book  before one of them came to be” (Ps. 139:16). Or Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5).

Black Genocide and Margaret Sanger

He denies the existence of a “black genocide” movement, referring to Margaret Sanger’s eugenics program. Sanger is the founder of abortion giant Planned Parenthood. Calling this movement black genocide fosters “a sense of racial paranoia and vulnerability,” Parker complains. He claims that it’s a ploy by “anti-nonChristian” whites. Whites who cry “black genocide,” he asserts, are the same people who don’t want health care or other resources for blacks.

It’s beyond dispute, however, that Sanger supported eugenics and fretted about a growing black population. In 1939, Sanger declared her plan for culling and controlling black population: “The most successful, educational appeal to the Negro is through a religious appeal,” she said. “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their rebellious members.” In other words, she hoped that black ministers would help spread her message of population control.

‘People Can Handle the Truth’ About Abortion

Parker also claims that people object to abortion because they do not know how it is performed. “I think we’ve empowered people opposed to abortion by being mute or defensive about the biological realities of pregnancy termination. …” Parker adds that people can handle the truth. “I think if we’re going to shift the culture around this very important service, we’ve got to trust people that they are capable of dealing with the substance of it.”

But abortion providers have long fought efforts to share the truth with mothers seeking abortions. Planned Parenthood fights any laws that would require mothers to see an ultrasound of their baby prior to an abortion. Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood facility manager, explained why: “There is one reason they don’t want women to see their ultrasound … it is too risky. Ultrasounds expose the lie of the abortion industry. They show that it is not just a ‘blob of tissue’ or a ‘mass of cells.'” She added that ultrasounds show the humanity of the child. 

Human Rights

Dr. King fought for rights of all human beings, including the unborn, Deacon Keith Fournier wrote earlier this year. “Without that right to life there can be no other human rights,” he said. “Human rights are goods of the human person and every procured abortion takes the life of an innocent human person. Civil rights are the domain of the State. They are meant to recognize and protect human rights.” Abortion is unjust to the most vulnerable among us and it must be resisted, according to Fournier. As Dr. King said, “Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.”