An April 10 Rolling Stone article featured an interview with Dr. Willie Parker, an abortionist who identifies as a Christian. Parker’s recently released book is titled “Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice” and was ghostwritten by Lisa Miller according to NYMag.com.
During the interview, Parker stated: “I don't think it's bombast at all that the closest thing I could think of that would be analogous to women not being in control of their reproductive rights would be the horrible legacy of slavery we have in this country.”
An April 8 Newsweek.com article noted, “…Parker compares restrictions on abortion to slavery.” The article added that he “spoke Wednesday night at the Strand Book Store in New York City about how, in both circumstances, someone claims to know what’s best for another individual and has control over that person’s autonomy.”
While this is an invalid comparison, a legitimate parallel can be drawn between slavery and abortion because both represent atrocities committed in American history. But while slavery has been abolished and most citizens view this aspect of the nation’s history with abhorrence, the legalized slaughter of millions in modern America represents an ongoing abortion genocide.
Future generations should learn to regard legalized abortion with the same revulsion that Americans currently regard the nation’s history of legal slavery.
While answering a question about how he’d been influenced by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, Parker claimed that abortion advances “human dignity”:
The courage that's necessary to assert yourself on behalf of human dignity, they modeled that for me, despite risk. And that became very important for me, because entering my role as an advocate for women's reproductive rights and basic human equality across gender, I was well aware what happens when you go against convention and dogma and custom. There was no naiveté. There was just an assertion of my responsibility to pursue justice and human dignity.
But abortion is the murder of an unborn baby and represents precisely the opposite of “justice and human dignity” because it involves unjustly taking the baby’s life and denying both its humanity and its dignity.
During the interview, Parker linked Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential election loss to her gender:
The system works against even the most powerful women in a patriarchal society. Even powerful women can be constrained by the aspirations of the most ordinary, mediocre men. I think you saw that in the last election: One of the most prepared candidates, with experience and a track record in government and service, her interests were subordinated to the fact that people were not comfortable with a woman being in the most powerful position in this country, and by default the world.
Contrary to Parker’s assertion, many voters (including women) supported Trump for reasons unrelated to gender. Important issues like the economy, illegal immigration, ObamaCare, the Supreme Court, and abortion motivated many Americans to cast their ballot for Trump.
In addition to saying that the “notion of ‘making America great again’…means ‘making America white again,’” Parker also seemed to accuse the conservative Tea Party movement of racism:
Conservative folk don't vote every four years – they vote in every political cycle. They vote at every level, which is why you have the Tea Party in 2010 as a direct response to having a black president. This whole notion of "taking our country back" – that rhetoric had never been spoken in the same way before the president was black.
For the final question of the interview, the interviewer queried:
“One final piece of the book I'd like to talk about is the shortest chapter…the one on the cynical “black genocide” movement. Why did you choose to address this conspiracy theory, pushed by anti-choice activists, that abortion is a white plot to kill black babies?”
Parker offered a lengthy answer that concluded with this bizarre analysis:
It just makes sense to me that the people opposed to abortion are really interested in controlling the fertility of white women. Because white women are the ones who are working outside the home and defying conventional nuclear family concepts. They've been able to do that by gaining control over their fertility. So what they understand is that if they exploit the fact that we're very uncomfortable with race in this country, and frame the opposition to abortion as one of anti-racism – that if they can stop abortion for black women, they can stop abortion for all women. This is their primary interest. The only person who can have white babies is a white woman. And yet, if ultimately controlling the fertility of white women – who have been the greatest benefactors of affirmative action in terms of having aspirations outside the nuclear family – then all these other policies make perfect sense. But they don't make any sense unless you can follow the thread and connect the dots to realize that they're hoping to control the fertility of more than just black women.
