Civil rights leader and pro-life activist Alveda King says Starbucks is missing an important part of its racial bias training by not addressing its partnership with Planned Parenthood. The abortion corporation receives funding via Starbucks matching gifts program, but King says that’s still too complicit with the abortion giant. Abortion is a leading killer of African Americans, and Planned Parenthood was founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger, in an effort to weed out what Sanger deemed “the unfit” members of society.
In her oped piece for the Washington Times, King writes in part:
But Starbucks had racism in its corporate identity long before the April arrests.
Through its corporate donations, Starbucks contributes to one of the most racist organizations in our nation’s history. Planned Parenthood, the largest single provider of abortions in the U.S., performs more than 300,000 terminations each year.
Planned Parenthood’s disdain for human dignity, especially in the African-American community, is deeply embedded in its 101-year history. The numbers do not lie.
More African-Americans have died from abortion than from AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer, and heart disease — combined. In America today, a black child is three times more likely to be killed in the womb than a white child. And since 1973, abortion has reduced the black population by more than 25 percent.
READ: 78% of abortions in New York City were black and hispanic babies
Indeed, the Guttmacher Institute shows even with the abortion rate declining overall, the highest number of abortions come from African Americans.
The Centers for Disease Control notes this disparity in its reports, as well:
Among women from the 39 areas for which race was reported for 2006, white women (including both Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women) accounted for the largest percentage (55.8%) of abortions; black women accounted for 36.4% and women of other racial groups for 7.8%… Black women had higher abortion rates and ratios than white women and women of other races…. Among the 29 reporting areas that provided data every year during 1997–2006, the percentage of abortions by race changed little; abortions by women in the “other” racial category increased, but the percentage remained low (5.8%–7.7%)…. Among women from all racial groups, abortion rates and ratios generally declined during 1997–2006, but the abortion rate was higher in 2006 than in 2005; for black women, the abortion ratio was lower in 2006 than in 2005, whereas for white women and women in the “other” racial category, this measure was relatively stable during 2005–2006…
As King notes:
Planned Parenthood operates the nation’s largest chain of abortion facilities, and almost 80 percent of its facilities are located in minority neighborhoods. About 13 percent of American women are black, but they have more than 35 percent of the abortions.
I often say that abortion is the civil rights issue of our time. Abortion denies the rights of the innocent. It refuses to help the most vulnerable. Abortion segregates the unborn child from his or her mother, and all of society.
But Planned Parenthood’s civil rights violations go even deeper.
Abortion mills like Planned Parenthood didn’t become prevalent in the lives of pregnant African-American women by happenstance. Planned Parenthood’s business model was specifically engineered to target them.
It begs the question: how can the coffee business take a stand nationally against racial injustice and yet continue to provide matching funds or any sort of funding to the racially biased abortion business?
In fact, a Live Action investigation showed that when a “Live Action investigator calls Planned Parenthood posing as a racist donor wanting to give a racially motivated donation intended to abort only black babies. The caller clearly expresses a racist agenda of wanting to ‘lower the number of blacks in America,'” but that did not discourage Planned Parenthood staff from accepting the money.
Donating to Planned Parenthood in any manner not only aids with perpetuating racism, but it also aids child sexual abusers, as Live Action’s new docuseries reveals.
Starbucks, however, told the Washington Examiner it does not deliberately fund the abortion business. The Examiner reports:
A Starbucks spokesperson told the Washington Examiner: “Starbucks does not have a corporate relationship or sponsorship with Planned Parenthood. Starbucks is listed as a donor of an organization because the Starbucks ‘Partner Match’ program provides matched cash awards for contributions made by Starbucks partners (employees). … Most 501(c)(3) designated nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and most Registered Charities in Canada qualify to receive matching funds.”
Starbucks doesn’t explain why “most” 501(c)(3) designated nonprofits have to include abortion funding. While it’s certainly a problem Planned Parenthood is even allowed to continue to have charity status, the use of the word most by the coffee business implies that it would be possible to eliminate Planned Parenthood from that list. Instead, it appears it is simply one wealthy corporation funding another.
