Civil Rights Today

Today, Americans honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and remember his legacy of fighting for civil rights for all people, regardless of the color of their skin. Did you know that the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is also a civil rights activist and has carried on his legacy of fighting for equal rights for all people? She fights for the rights of an entire class of persons who, to this day, continue to be discriminated against. These people are discriminated against based on their age, size, location, and sometimes even their gender or race. Who are these people and why do we allow them to be continually discriminated against?

These people that Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, fights for are our neighbors in the womb. All it takes for them to lose any and all of their rights as human beings is to be labeled as an "inconvenience" or a "choice." Anytime during the first nine months of their lives, they can be killed by well-paid doctors at the insistence of their own mothers. This is permissible simply because of how old they are, how dependent they are and because of where they are. And it goes beyond that. Girls are aborted much more often than boys not only in foreign countries such as India and China, but the practice of sex-selective abortion has been happening in America as well. Additionally,while African Americans comprise 12.4% of the American population, over 30% of the nation's abortions are done on African American women. In Pennsylvania, 1 out of every 2 African-American pregnancies end in abortion.  Of course, this isn't very surprising since Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist eugenicist, Margaret Sanger.

Speaking of her uncle, Dr. Alveda King said, "I know in my heart that if Uncle Martin were alive today, he would join with me in the greatest civil rights struggle of this generation - the recognition of the unborn child's basic right to life." King's father, Rev. A.D. King, was also a leader in the civil rights movement.

So today, as we remember the great strides made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists in the fight for equality, let us continue to fight for civil rights for all people - regardless of their age, size, location, gender, or race.