New Atlanta Billboard Campaign Ties Abortion To Slavery

The Radiance Foundation, an Atlanta-based anti-abortion group, launched a billboard campaign on Sunday that compares abortion to the history of slavery in America. The 50 billboards -- which were strategically erected on Juneteenth, which commemorates the ending of slavery in the U.S. -- feature the slogan, "The 13th Amendment Freed Us. Abortion Enslaves Us."

Ryan Bomberger, chief creative officer of The Radiance Foundation, told HuffPost he has "no political aim at all" in launching the campaign—he just wants to expose the negative effect that abortion has on his community.

"When you look at what abortion has brought to the black community, it can't be typified to anything other than present-day slavery," he said. "Roe v. Wade used the 14th Amendment--which finally gave humanity to African Americans—and contorted it to give someone the right to kill an unborn child. It's just like slavery, because you have a class of people who are considered less than human, and therefore they can be treated like property."

The Radiance billboards are the latest development in a growing attempt by the pro-life movement to target black women, who currently account for about 30 percent of all U.S. abortions, but only 12 percent of the population. Radiance launched a previous billboard campaign in 2010 claiming that "Black Children Are An Endangered Species," and Life Always, a Texas-based anti-abortion group, sponsored a controversial series of ads in Chicago earlier this year that featured a picture of President Obama's face next to the message, "Every 21 minutes, our next future leader is aborted."

While black women do account for a disproportionately high amount of abortions, further examination reveals that economic circumstances account for the disparity more than any other racial or cultural factor. African Americans made up nearly a quarter of the population living below the poverty level in 2009, according to the most recent census data, and 42 percent of women who seek abortions are poor. Moreover, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that 62 percent of pregnancies among women below the poverty line are unintended.

The NAACP has historically declined to take a position on the issue of abortion, but the civil rights organization is nonetheless disturbed by the race-baiting ads and their implications.

"Comparing abortion to slavery certainly raises major concerns," Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP, told HuffPost in an interview. "Women are not forced to have abortions the way they were in servitude. Slavery was about not having the right to make any decisions. Women were actually bred to produce children for the purposes of profit. This is so far removed from that, that if it weren't such a serious issue, it would almost be laughable."

Comments

[Sisa]

01:18 AM on 06/22/2011

Really? No ... Really?

[silverball]

06:36 PM on 06/21/2011

......"no political aim at all"....yeah, right....does your organization promote lying and misrepresentation too???

[Donna1224]

05:12 PM on 06/21/2011

Just another over the top anti-abortion and probably anti-everything group popping up to spread hate and misery!

[littlerabbit]

05:02 PM on 06/21/2011

Not being able to have a choice is what enslaves us. When you try to control the body of a woman who is not a part of your life -- guess what, it's none of your business. Control your own humanity.

[F4U Corsair]

05:45 PM on 06/21/2011

It isn't the woman's business either to kill another human inside her. That argument goes one of two directions, either it is human and you are championing murder, or it isn't human and you would have to admit that men no longer are on the hook for child support.

[Kit Kimberly]

12:39 AM on 06/22/2011

A woman is not an incubator and no law will force women to carry children they don't want.

All anti-abortion laws do is force women to risk their health and lives by having illegal, often unsafe abortions.

Men who don't want children should have vasectomies, ALWAYS use condoms, or not have sex.

[D-Barger]

08:55 AM on 06/22/2011

It's also not your business.

[captainrick]

04:36 PM on 06/21/2011

The irony of this obnoxious advertising campaign is overwhelming. This anti-abortion tyrade by the right attacking Planned Parenthood and other efforts to make Roe v. Wade meaningless is merely more of an attack on access to healthcare itself just like the repub effort to abolish medicare and medicaid. Taking away healthcare choices is itself a form of enslavement. Thus the terrible, awful irony.

[Jessica Molina]

03:56 PM on 06/21/2011

(part 2) I'm pro-choice, HOWEVER, I believe that women deciding to terminate a pregnancy should really understand what they are doing, what the procedure entails and how they are going to feel afterwards. In this world, the poor have children, and the children suffer. Child trafficking is everywhere. Children are sold daily to pay off debts. So to say that abortion is a tool to oppress a poor minority is not accurate. Abortion is a way to keep minorities from continuing a vicious cycle of poverty. It's a way for women to be in control of their bodies and minds, and to take that choice away, is an oppression.
Abortion is not an easy choice. People creating legislations idealize a woman's choice to have an abortion to be like choosing what to eat for dinner or what shoes to wear. A woman that has an abortion doesn't show her pain, because although she doesn't want a child, society conditions humanity to equate abortion to murder. This then makes a woman feel shameful- shameful that she's thought about it or done it. I guarantee that everyone knows a woman that has had an abortion, whether they know it or not. The feelings of shame, guilt and the conditioning of abortion synonomous with murder is an oppression on women, specifically the poor, to keep the rich in control, because if the poor get out of slums, get an education and begin to gain control, those that have it, lose it.

[Jessica Molina]

03:51 PM on 06/21/2011

(part 1) Blacks and other minorities are not the only ones getting abortions, so the correlation between slavery/treating life as property, is not a strong one (I UNDERSTAND it, I just don't think it's strong). LEGAL abortions cost money, therefore if you're saying that poor people are being oppressed with the OPTION of abortion, I disagree. ILLEGAL abortions aren't counted in statistics the way clinical abortions are. Furthermore, there are many more women of all nationalities, including white women, that get abortions. Some women just don't want children. Abortion is really a religious argument, because it's a belief (which is really an opinion) on when "life" starts and what one considers "life" to be. Does a heartbeat constitute life or does it constitute cells working together to perform a function? Is life determined by events, emotions, and thoughts? When you tell someone to get a life, do they not already have one? QUALITY of life is something that every woman considers when getting an abortion, whether it's her own or the potential life of the fetus.

[BrickzYard]

03:21 PM on 06/21/2011

None of us here on the HuffPo appreciate the real world extent of the mammoth genocidal conspiracy that is the 'reawakening' of 'The Old South'! I have recently become informed of the planned, but unspoken, extinction of the Negro race in the USofA! Certainly it was borne in the days and months leading up to the Civil War, but it did not die with the Confederate Army. It is still very much alive especially in the minds of current day Old South leadership, at all levels of the state, county and township. Those of us who care enough about America had better become informed of the philosophy that is driving those we see everyday in Congress and elsewhere, and work hard to define this true 'Enemy of the People'. We should start by reading the writings of Richard M Weaver, deceased, who described and defined the heart of the still alive Old South. Weaver cites many of the thinkers of the secessionist South who no doubt have provided the basis of the bald faced racism carried on in Congress on a daily basis. The problem is we haven't yet brought the problem out into the open mainly from the simple ignorance of those who truly need to know. The secessionist movement is simply smoldering beneath the surface until such time as the Old Dixie-ites have elected enough power to effect the genocide they crave.

[Jessica Molina]

04:20 PM on 06/21/2011

I understand your argument, but I feel the real issue here is that by making abortions illegal it continues poverty throughout poor minority classes by creating a stigma equating abortion with murder. The number of minorities is increasing every year and soon, the number of minorities will outnumber the majority. However, if that minority becoming a majority is a poor, uneducated class, they won't feel they have power, and the "new minority aka the majority now", although outnumbered, will still have control.
As a Puerto Rican female, having had an abortion, I understand how my life would have been different. I would have been struggling to put food on the table for myself and a child, probably working 2 jobs to make ends meet. This creates an absent parent, where a child will then stray or get lost in society. It also creates an uneducated parent. Are there exceptions to the rule, absolutely, but they are few. I would have been a statistic. Instead, I'm receiving an education, working towards creating my own business, and I'm a voice with power within my communities.
There are always 2 sides to a coin and a story. The extinction of a race is probably not the main reason abortion is being argued (although i'm sure it's on the minds of quite a few), it's the oppression of all minorities to keep the rich, educated upper class in power.

[Rosy]

02:37 PM on 06/21/2011

The billboards about slavery are ridiculous.
The other billboards mentioned in the article, showing a picture of the president and saying "every 21 minutes our next future leader is aborted" are just as absurd. What's next? "every 4 seconds our next future leader is prevented because of the use of birth control, so let's outlaw it!" Or "every 6 seconds, our next future leader isn't conceived because someone has a headache!" It's beyond silly.

[thundermummy]

04:51 PM on 06/21/2011

Future leaders? How do they know? What if the fetus is Maddoff, or Dahmer or a wife beating dead beat?

[Bronxdude]

02:24 PM on 06/21/2011

Republicans are not “doing the business of American”; instead, they are doing the business of the wealthy and multinational corporations like Halliburton and Koch Industries. Even though the Hyde Amendment strictly prohibits federal money for abortions and Planned Parenthood funding helps uninsured and low-income women with contraceptives, health education, medical care, and life-saving cancer screenings, and a plurality of Americans support the mission of Planned Parenthood, Beck calls those in need of Planned Parenthood services “Hookers,” to which Boehner laughs, and Ryan pushes forward to end their funding, effectively denying healthcare for 12 million women, a political move that will cost thousands of lives, but appease the Tea Bags. Funding for Planned Parenthood and NPR combined accounts for less than one-tenth of one percent of the total federal budget, which only reinforces the fact that this is a political issue and nothing more than political payback for Republicans selling their souls to win the House. If Democrats falter and Republicans get their way, Republicans will redefine rape to prevent abortions, and millions of women that use Planned Parenthood as their primary provider to prevent cancer, learn about reproductive health, and receive basic screenings (over 800,000 mammograms annually) will be left out in the cold with no where to turn. For every dollar Planned Parenthood spends, they save taxpayers 4. Instead of decreasing military funding for the Bush Wars, slashing the trillion dollar defense budget, and holding accountable unscrupulous defense contractors who continue to benefit financially by ripping off the government, the GOP has chosen to declare war against women. America unite, take a stand against the GOP led draconian attack on women’s rights!

[Bronxdude]

02:23 PM on 06/21/2011

Republican allegiance to Pro-Life ends precipitously at birth, as evidenced by the patently anti-human legislation republicans have introduced since the 1973 decision that addressed gender bias by invalidating state laws restricting women’s reproductive rights. Once born, and no longer a “wedge issue” infused with the capacity to manipulate sentiment and ensnare the vaunted evangelical vote, republicans have no use for the bottom 98%. Republicans rail against “intrusive government,” but are aggressively pursuing legislation designed to control the reproductive health of 90 million women, while concurrently defunding essential “safety-net” programs to offset Republican deficit expansion created when Republicans forced Congress to borrow trillions from China to pay for tax cuts for those earning $250,000 or more. According to non-partisan CBO numbers, Obamacare will reduce the deficit by trillions, yet Republicans are intent on repeal because access to healthcare will dramatically increase the standard of hope for the bottom 98%, while making parasitic insurers like UnitedDeathcare less profitable, which worries Republicans. Even though the Hyde Amendment disallows federal money for abortions and Planned Parenthood funding helps uninsured women with contraceptives, health education, medical care, and life-saving cervical cancer screenings, Republicans want to end their funding, effectively denying healthcare for 14 million women, which will cost lives. In an effort to exploit Pro-Life voters, and whereas South Dakota Republicans want to legalize killing abortion providers as “justifiable homicide,” instead of creating jobs and fixing the economic mess his party created, under Boehner, restricting abortion in cases of incest and rape and allowing women to die rather than receive a life saving abortion are major GOP priorities, aside from increasing tax cuts for the wealthy. Since taking control of the House, Republicans have not introduced any job creation legislation, just legislation designed to benefit the wealthy elite. Please, will the next Bella Abzug stand-up!

[MarkJudiGoet]

04:41 PM on 06/21/2011

Hypocrisy thy name is G.O.P.

[supra21]

01:55 PM on 06/21/2011

I see our friends at Huff are censoring again. Does anyone besides me realise, that as subscribers we have a right to not be censored?

[KIVPossum]

03:45 PM on 06/21/2011

As subscribers? How much are you paying?

When you own the site, you can do it as you want.

[supra21]

11:19 PM on 06/21/2011

Huff Po is owned now by AOL/Time -Warner, which, last I checked my portfolio, is indeed a publicly traded company.

[maxben]

03:51 PM on 06/21/2011

Nope, its just you.
There are civillian (non-paid posters who show merit) moderators on this site for a reason.
So call it what you will, you were probably being offensive and off-point.

[supra21]

01:25 PM on 06/22/2011

MAny of us have issues with the way Huff fails to post comments. I am not abusive, even thought the opportunity presents itself often. Nor do I tend to ramble off topic. It's just a little frustrating to take the time to express your opinions only to see them eliminated by someone in a position to do so.

[Political Piggy]

01:32 PM on 06/21/2011

"While black women do account for a disproportionately high amount of abortions, further examination reveals that economic circumstances account for the disparity more than any other racial or cultural factor."

So, wouldn't poverty be a tad closer to "slavery" than abortion Radiance Foundation? By the way, are the white, asian (etc) women who have abortions also victims of "slavery"?

[johuyik]

12:48 PM on 06/21/2011

OldSarg on Jun 20, 2011 at 22:47:10
“And the women have a right to know that they are being targeted by Planned Parenthood­. "

Ah, so that's there plan? Trick women into getting pregnant so they can then trap them into getting an abortion? Ingenious!

Thanks Oldsarg, you logic is unequalled!

[Rosy]

02:19 PM on 06/21/2011

sadly, there are some who actually believe this. It's really amazing.

[Nelle]

12:47 PM on 06/21/2011

Lack of access to quality education, healthcare and decent jobs enslaves us.

[F4U Corsair]

05:48 PM on 06/21/2011

Exactly WHO can't get an education in this nation for free? I know Mexicans who are doing pretty well with our system.

[D-Barger]

08:55 AM on 06/22/2011

Don't lie. You don't know any Mexicans.

Public school, while "free," is paid for with tax dollars. College costs money. You would know this if you were educated.

Now go find some Mexicans to help you with this, since they're smarter than you.

[Nelle]

12:24 PM on 06/22/2011

The key word here is 'quality'.