(Video above: Melissa Harris-Perry declares Selma march about “Reproductive rights”)
SELMA, Ala. — Tens of thousands came to Selma last weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march across the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. But MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry got a “sense” that this year’s march was about something different, namely the “right” to an abortion.
“There is a sense in this crowd that people are marching for issues that are on the table right now,” Harris-Perry said. “We saw an enormous contingent of Planned Parenthood go past. Folks who are clearly out here marching because they believe that reproductive rights continue to be threatened in this country, and particularly in the South.”
“This is truly motivated by what the president has called, and, of course, in quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘the fierce urgency of now,’” she continued.
While last weekend’s Selma marches have been touted by numerous causes, from gay marriage to immigration, some civil rights leaders have particularly balked at the connection between the civil rights struggle of the 1960s and the pro-abortion movement of today.
Just last week, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Dr. Alveda King said in a press release that she was marching for a very different reason—to protect the unborn.
“They were marching for the right to vote back then,” Alveda King said. “Hundreds of us will march to commemorate the price many paid, some with their lives, for the right for African-Americans to vote. I will be marching and praying also for America to wake up to the fact that since 1973 over 55 million babies, about 18 million of them Black, have been legally aborted in America. They died before they were able to grow up and vote.”
The numbers certainly give credence to Dr. Alveda King’s position. In 2010, of the 9,029 abortions occurring in Alabama, 59.7% of them were performed on black women. That’s 5,392 African Americans who will never be given the opportunity to grow up, vote, or join hands with thousands of other Americans as they commemorate how far the country has come from the racial violence of the past, in one year alone.
This isn’t the first time Harris-Perry has used her platform on MSNBC to advocate for abortion.
During the Texas legislature’s fight to pass a pro-life bill, similar to Alabama’s Women’s Health and Safety Act, she wore a pair of tampon earrings on air to show support for the raucous protestors who held up the legislature’s vote by throwing the feminine products at the members voting to protect life.
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
