Baltimore Ravens player Benjamin Watson believes Planned Parenthood and its founder Margaret Sanger, planned to “exterminate Blacks.”
In an interview with Turning Point Pregnancy Resource Center, the tight end revealed though he does not have any “unique insight” into the issue of abortion, one of Sanger’s early goals at Planned Parenthood was to eradicate African-Americans.
“I do know that Blacks kind of represent a large portion of the abortions, and I do know that honestly, the whole idea with Planned Parenthood and [Margaret] Sanger in the past was to exterminate Blacks, and it’s kind of ironic that it’s working,” the NFL pro said. “We [as minorities] support candidates, and overwhelmingly support the idea of having Planned Parenthood and the like, and yet, that is why she created it. We are buying it hook, line, and sinker like it’s a great thing.”
Watson, a father of five, is right about high abortion rates among African-Americans. The Centers for Disease Control reported Black people make up 14 percent of the US population but Black women account for 40 percent of abortions.
As for Sanger, Atlanta Black Star reports there is debate over whether or not she held racist views. Scholars and anti-abortion activists agree the founder was a supporter of eugenics but they differ over the implications. Activists argue Planned Parenthood was specifically founded to control the size of Black families, but scholars say Sanger thought abortion should be voluntary and not based on race.
Still, Sanger implemented The Negro Project in 1939, getting the help of Black religious leaders to rally the community. It was enough to lead to the sterilization of millions of Black women for decades.
“It’s just amazing to me and abortion saddens me period, but it seems to be something that is really pushed on minorities and provided to minorities especially as something that they should do,” Watson continued. “In the public, it seems to be painted that when minorities get pregnant they need to get abortions, especially when it comes to teen pregnancy. It’s like when Black girls are pregnant, it’s like a statistic, but when white girls get pregnant, they get a TV show.”
Watson criticized the promotion of Black economic power as hypocritical as long as abortions continue to happen in the community.
“We sit here and talk about advancing the Black agenda, whatever that means, we talk about our interests, and what’s important to us – like having political power and advancement and all those things – and then we are turning around and we are killing our children. And we are buying the lie that it’s our personal decision to make.”