Selma’s “Bloody Sunday” is now about “reproductive rights” according to MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry. Her view directly contradicted Martin Luther King, Jr.’s niece, who has make her pro-life views public.
While covering the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Ala. live for MSNBC on March 8, Harris-Perry proclaimed that this year’s march stood for issues “on the table right now.” Issues like abortion.
Stressing Planned Parenthood’s “enormous contingent” present, she said they marched “because they believe that reproductive rights continue to be threatened.”
Describing the scene, Harris-Perry said, “This is truly motivated by what the president has called, and, of course, in quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘the fierce urgency of now.’”
“There is a sense in this crowd that what people are here marching for are issues that are on the table right now,” Harris-Perry said as Planned Parenthood supporters stood behind her in pink shirts. “We saw an enormous contingent of Planned Parenthood go past, folks who are clearly out here, marching because they believe that reproductive rights continue to be threatened in this country, and particularly in the South.”
Harris-Perry also acknowledged the presence of the Chicago Lawyers Committee [1] for Civil Rights Under the Law and the “head [2] of the NAACP,” Cornell William Brooks.
“Bloody Sunday” was an infamous confrontation between police and peaceful marchers credited with aiding the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In contrast to Harris-Perry’s claims, Dr. Alveda King promoted life. MLK Jr.’s niece and Director of African American Outreach for Priests for Life (and Fox News contributor [3]), also joined the Selma50 observance.
Instead of “reproductive rights,” she said in a Priests for Life press release [4] that she and many others were marching at Selma for the millions of babies aborted in the U.S.
“Hundreds of us will march to commemorate the price many paid, some with their lives, for the right for African-Americans to vote,” King said. “I will be marching and praying also for America to wake up to the fact that since 1973 over 55 million babies, about 18 million of them Black, have been legally aborted in America. They died before they were able to grow up and vote. There is a connection here.”
Quoting her uncle she continued, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
In a Fox News interview about the march, King called out [5] the “largest abortion provider,” Planned Parenthood, for receiving $2 million dollars from taxpayers every day. She also expressed similar views about life while discussing [6] how “black lives matter.”
— Katie Yoder is Staff Writer, Joe and Betty Anderlik Fellow in Culture and Media at the Media Research Center. Follow Katie Yoder on Twitter. [7]