During an August 22 Fox News discussion about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s supposed appeal to African American voters, Trump campaign surrogate and radio host Pastor Mark Burns suggested abortion providers were targeting black communities.
According to Burns, “abortion clinics” are “positioned strategically within urban communities” resulting in the abortion of “14 to 15 million black babies.” Burns additionally claimed that “you cannot declare ‘Black lives matter’ when black baby lives don’t matter” -- hijacking language used by racial justice advocates.
Burns’ comments echo the well-known anti-choice conspiracy theory that abortion providers like Planned Parenthood have racist motivations. The allegation that Planned Parenthood clinics are strategically or primarily located in black or Latino neighborhoods has been previously debunked by the Guttmacher Institute which found that “6 in 10 abortion providers are located in majority-white neighborhoods.” In addition to pushing this myth, right wing media have also frequently co-opted the language of the Black Lives Matter movement to suggest that restricting abortion access improves black lives -- ignoring how women of color suffer when health care providers like Planned Parenthood are forced out of communities.
From the August 22 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom:
MARTHA MACCALLUM (HOST): What he is saying Marjorie that Democrats claimed to want to help the African-American community and they haven't. And then they come back at vote time and say, hey you better stick with us, we're only people who care about you. And Donald Trump is saying you know what? Listen to what both sides are saying maybe you might want to consider opening your mind up to voting in different way, because if you keep trying same thing time and time thing, it’s not working for you, maybe you ought to consider a different tact.
[…]
MARK BURNS: Well let me just say this. The fact of the matter is, and I’m just I piggyback on what you're saying, American Americans have been voting and supporting the Democratic party for over 50 years and what do we have to show for it? What we have to show for it right now is the net worth of African American family is less than $5,000. Unemployment is even at a high. Food stamps and welfare benefits are at an all-time high. The net worth of a white family in American is $93,000 to $116,000. So there’s obviously a huge gap. What do we as African Americans have to show for? We got mass incarnations by the Democratic party. We have abortion clinics that are positioned strategically within urban communities in this country where we make up as African Americans 14 percent of the population but over 40 percent of the abortions are done by black women. So you cannot declare “Black lives matter” when black baby lives don't matter. That's over 14 to 15 million black babies that have been killed. So to sit here and to say oh let's continue to do the same thing but yet expecting different results, one writer said that is insanity. And it is insane for African Americans to consistently, continually to be backing a party who is not really even working for your vote, by the way, they’re not even working for our vote. They’re only declaring we own you, we provide for you, we own you. It’s an economic enslavement that is locking up African Americans around this country because they cannot grow and become dependent, they are being enslaved by the system.