By Elizabeth O'Brien
DETROIT, July 10, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) once again rejected a pro-life resolution that would attempt to address the pressing issues of abortion and infant mortality in the American African community.
This July approximately 8,000 NAACP members met in Detroit for the organization's annual convention. While Saturday's major theme was improving access to heath care, NAACP authorities rejected the pro-life resolution of the Macon, Georgia, chapter for the second time since 2004.
Christian News Wire reports that according to Rev. Clenard Childress Jr., the national director of LEARN, an African American pro-life organization, 36% of abortions (a total of 1,452 per day) are performed on African Americans.
Noting these numbers, Childress called it "deplorable" that the "noble institution with such a rich history would choose again to censor one of its own chapters."
He asked, "What have we come to when those whom (sic) have the charge of protecting our rights willfully choose to take them away?"
Dr. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and pastoral associate for Priests for Life, strongly urged the NAACP to recognize the importance of the pro-life resolution. "The NAACP has always been about justice," said King, quoted in the Christian Post. "Today, there is no greater injustice facing black people than abortion."
She continued, "Over 13 million African Americans are not here because they died by legal abortion. It's as if a plague swept through our cities and towns and took one of every four blacks. Talk about inconvenient truths." She also emphasized that the national leadership of the NAACP, "needs to address what abortion has done to the African American community and our nation as a whole, even if it means making some people in high positions uncomfortable."
Her address concluded, "The National Board of the NAACP needs to know that its membership loves our children and wants what is right for them, and what is right is for them to be allowed to live."
Read related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Pro-Abortion NAACP given Green Light For Washington's Catholic U. Chapter
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/oct/04101305.html
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"In Cordibus Jesu et Mariae"
