A Republican gubernatorial candidate from North Carolina, Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, used an event honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to rail against Planned Parenthood.
Like many Conservative Christians, Forest falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood's mission was to eradicate the Black population.
Forest said:
"There is no doubt that when Planned Parenthood was created, it was created to destroy the entire Black race. That was the purpose of Planned Parenthood."
"And that's just the truth...How the Black community can't come together to see that and understand the fight against ― I don't know."
"How the White [community] can't see that and come together ― I don't know, and so we have a job to do. And the challenge to all of us is do we have the courage to do it?"
He later echoed the rhetoric on Twitter.
The gubernatorial hopeful was echoing talking points from numerous anti-choice activists that Planned Parenthood was designed to limit the Black population. It was founded by Margaret Sanger—a devout eugenicist—but Sanger was actually against abortion, and Planned Parenthood didn't perform abortions during her tenure as its leader.
What's more, Planned Parenthood facilities didn't start performing abortions until Roe v. Wade was settled in the Supreme Court—years after Sanger died.
Forest's own rhetoric indicates that he cares about Black people and other people of color only when he can disguise his own causes as concerns for them. Forest is also apparently forgetting that asking Black people to abandon all institutions whose roots were founded in disenfranchising them would mandate a disavowal of nearly every mainstream entity in the United States, including the U.S. government itself.
Forest said at a church service last year:
"[God] wants us to bring people together and live in the world like the Acts 2 church did. And yet no other nation, my friends, has ever survived the diversity and multiculturalism that America faces today, because of a lack of assimilation, because of this division, and because of this identity politics."
People weren't buying Forest's latest campaign ploy.
Today is the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
