LANSING, MI (FR) – Sending another clear signal that Americans are rejecting the Roe Vs. Wade decision, a group of blacks in Lansing, Michigan, conducted the first all-black pro-life rescue in February of this year. Ten blacks were arrested for sitting in the packed waiting room of Womancare Clinic while chained together with kryptonite locks. Each of the rescue participants were charged with unlawful assembly and ordered to pay a $50 fine.

The rescue was organized by a former police officer, Greg Keath. Another organizer, Rev. Van Gayton of Mt. Zion Christian Assembly, New York, said the Lansing rescue was the start of an ongoing recruitment effort to get blacks involved in the pro-life movement. “According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 43 percent of the babies aborted are black,” said Rev. Gayton. “We want to motivate blacks across the nation to get involved, since the majority of blacks are pro-life.” Gayton was arrested in Atlanta for participating in a major rescue, and has been involved with the movement since last September.

Gayton explained that the abortion issue was a civil rights issue because of the similarity between the woman’s right to her own body and the plantation owner’s right to do what he wanted to do with his slave – a question in the Dred Scott slavery decision. During the rescue, which took place on February 25, Keath told reporters, “We as black women and men are here today to refute and to reject the recent stance of Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, etc. regarding rescue demonstrations not being morally connected to the civil rights movement of the ’60s and that our protests are trying to deny Americans their constitutional rights to freedom of choice.

“We state that there is a definite connection between the two, for just as Dred Scott declared our ancestors non-persons, and therefore devoid of rights under the law, so Roe vs. Wade has declared our children non-persons and stripped them of their constitutional rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“One of our main goals is to expose Planned Parenthood because (it’s founder) Margaret Sanger was a eugenist who believed that minority races should be eliminated. She had a negro project and had ministers and prominent blacks involved so she could penetrate the black community,” he said. “Most of the major clinics today are in inner cities.”

The Lansing rescue is likely to generate interest among black pro-life groups throughout the nation. Operation Rescue, the umbrella organization spearheading the national rescue movement, conducts non-violent sit-ins similar to those conducted by blacks during the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s.