Planned Parenthood Denies Targeting Black Community
A crowd of about 95 people gathered Tuesday in the gym of Knoxville Baptist Christian School in East Knoxville to hear a speech by Catherine Davis, the controversial creator of a billboard campaign in Atlanta charging that many abortions are racially motivated.
"The African-American community in the United States of America in 2010 is being targeted by the abortion industry," said Davis, who is black. She is the minority outreach coordinator of Georgia Right to Life and spoke to an audience that was predominantly white, with about a dozen black local ministers and others.
"I'm crying for my people," a teary-eyed Davis said.
The event was sponsored by the Pro-Life Coalition for East Tennessee, which is protesting the move of a Planned Parenthood clinic from a predominantly white neighborhood in West Knoxville to the predominantly black neighborhood surrounding its new location on Cherry Street.
Planned Parenthood said its move was based on the convenience of the location and the suitability of the building.
"I would categorically deny that we target the black community," said Steven Emmert, vice president of patient services at the Planned Parenthood clinic. "At Planned Parenthood, we target women who don't have access to health care.
"The preventive services that we've been providing for 50 years in the Knoxville community speak to the fact that we provide services for all women. And for most of our patients, we become their primary care provider through their annual exams and cancer screening."
Davis' Atlanta billboards feature a photo of a black baby boy looking worried, with the words, "Black children are an endangered species."
Since the billboard campaign launched in January, Davis has been featured by CNN, Fox News, the Los Angeles Times and other news organizations.
Davis gave several examples of how she said abortion providers were targeting the black community, including some statements made by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger decades ago, recent Planned Parenthood television advertisements featuring black athletes, the location of clinics in low-income areas and abortion statistics.
In 2006 in Tennessee, there were 17,883 abortions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, 46 percent were among black women, even though black people make up less than 14 percent of the population.
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SOURCE: Knox News
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