Seamless Garment, Part II

Maafa. I had never heard the word until my SFLA boss said it, in the name of a movie she wanted us interns to see. She explained that Maafa refers to the oppression of Africans and African Americans through slavery and other atrocities. The movie, Maafa 21, explains how this has carried into the 21st century.

Congressman Trent Franks screened the documentary for a crowd of pro-lifers, the National Black Pro-Life Union, some African American pastors, and more people I did not know where to place.

The documentary started at the beginning of racial oppression in the US, way back before it was the US. The coverage of history through the Civil War was a much more up-front and in-your-face about the horrors of slavery than you sometimes see, but it told basically the same story you get in a history course.

After the Civil War, it shifted course. We don't hear much about eugenics and forced sterilization in our country, but the movement to eliminate minorities using the principles of evolution was strong. (Note: I'm putting in some links in case anyone wants to read a little more, but I gleaned all these facts from the documentary.) States sanctioned, and sometimes required that women seeking help, especially from minorities, and at times their pre-adolescent children be sterilized. The founder of the American Birth Control League (later Planned Parenthood), Margaret Sanger, along with Lethrop Stoddard, Dr. Harry Laughlin, and others, was deeply involved in both eugenics and birth control. They saw targeted marketing of birth control as a method to achieve the ideal population.

But eugenics gained the bad name it should always have had after WWII and birth control didn't work -- it did not appeal to the people the movement targeted. Civil rights leaders, including Jesse Jackson, spoke out against birth control and then-illegal abortion. But once the civil rights movement gained victories and abortion was legalized, the tune changed. For civil rights leaders, giving up their pro-life message meant political gain; for the "former" eugenicists, legal abortion meant a marketing make-over for the same agenda.

African Americans make up 13% of the US population and 37% of abortions. African American babies are 5 times more likely to be killed by an abortion than white babies. Abortion providers place a huge proportion of abortion facilities in minority neighborhood.

I can't do the film justice here. It made me tear up and feel ill. I recommend that you watch the trailer. I recommend that you watch the documentary.