Two Black ministers recently spoke in a documentary, denouncing abortion as racist and calling on Black faith leaders to speak out against “the slaughter of the unborn.”
Pastor John Amanchukwu and Bishop Patrick L. Wooden Sr. of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in North Carolina both spoke in the documentary, “The 1916 Project,” which explores Margaret Sanger’s role in creating the culture of death that encompasses the world today. Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a known racist and eugenicist, who advocated for the controlling of certain populations through birth control and sterilization. (Another well-researched documentary produced years ago by the pro-life group Life Dynamics, Inc., “Maafa 21,” addressed this same topic, and can be viewed here.)
In the documentary, Bishop Wooden decried the fact that few pastors will speak about abortion, noting, “[M]any preachers today are more Democrat than they are Gospel preacher when it comes to things like preaching against abortion, the slaughter of the unborn.” He then said, bluntly, “Nothing is more racist in America than the abortion industry.”
Amanchukwu echoed these sentiments, saying that many preachers have become “parrots” for Planned Parenthood. He recounted a situation in which he was once approached by a Black man outside an abortion facility, asking why he was “fighting a white man’s issue.”
“Now, I was taken aback when he said that because a majority of people out there praying, trying to save the babies, are white,” Amanchukwu said. “But the majority of the moms in the clinic prepared to abort their babies, they’re Black, including this gentleman’s girlfriend. But he could only see a racial issue in that I was over there with the white people, trying to worship and pray and save babies.”
This is not the first time the two men have denounced abortion; they have both been outspoken opponents of Planned Parenthood for years, warning of Sanger’s intention to “exterminate the Negro population.” In 2023, Bishop Wooden released a video ad as part of the Protect Women Ohio campaign, fighting against the state’s constitutional amendment supporting abortion.
“What is the No. 1 killer of us? It’s not the police,” Bishop Wooden said in the video. “It’s abortion.”
Amanchukwu has also spoken extensively about why Planned Parenthood was really founded.
“To find the true meaning of a thing you go back to its origin where it originated, what was the purpose, what was the intent. The purpose and intent of Margaret Sanger was to exterminate the Black race…. So every Planned Parenthood that still exists today, it has its origins — it’s roots — in the extermination of the Black race. I’m amazed that we’ve even allowed for Planned Parenthood to even remain. To know that in its origin, in its infancy, it was to eviscerate — to eliminate — the Black race,” he told a reporter in 2020.
“When you go to the clinic you will see a steady track of African Americans going into that abortion clinic…. I will pick you up… drive you over… so you can see the travesty, the slaughter, the holocaust that is being wrought on the general community at large and in particular the Black race,” he added.
Though Planned Parenthood no longer uses certain language and has tried to distance itself from Sanger, abortion continues to disproportionately impact Black communities. In 2021, Black Americans made up 11.6% of people living in the United States, yet they accounted for 41.5% of abortions — the highest percentage of all abortions by ethnicity.
