CHICAGO -- Rev. Isaac Hayes, a minister at Chicago's Apostolic Church of God, came out to a vacant lot in the Englewood neighborhood on Tuesday to support a Texas minister as he launched an anti-abortion billboard campaign targeting the city's black community.
On a building adjacent to the lot were three newly unveiled billboards that held the likeness of President Barack Obama and the words: "Every 21 minutes our next possible leader is aborted."
"They called me to see if I would join with them to give (the event) a local feel," said Hayes, a conservative Republican who last year lost his bid to unseat Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. "I reached out to Cedra Crenshaw (a Republican who ran for state Senate) because she was a female and we didn't want a bunch of grumpy old guys up there."
So, Crenshaw, Hayes and several others stood on the platform with Rev. Stephen Broden, head pastor of the Dallas-based Fair Park Bible Fellowship church, as he explained why his organization, Life Always, is placing 30 billboards across Chicago, most of them on the South Side.
He said he wants the billboards "to encourage reflection" on the high abortion rate among blacks.
Throughout the launch, a small group of women, mainly from the nearby Black Women for Reproductive Justice, jeered "Go back to Texas" and "We don't want you here." But Broden pressed forward.
"For too long the scourge of abortion has been hidden behind political correctness," said Broden, who is African-American. "Liberal interests have deceived our women into believing that the answer to poverty is to murder their babies."
He said Planned Parenthood was participating in a modern-day eugenics movement.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood of Illinois called the billboards "an offensive and condescending effort to stigmatize and shame African-American women while attempting to limit their ability to make private, personal medical decisions."
Broden cited statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that although blacks comprise less than 13 percent of the population, they account for about 36 percent of the country's abortions.
Cherisse Scott, a health educator with Black Women for Reproductive Justice, said she resented outsiders, including Hayes and Crenshaw, coming to Englewood for the anti-abortion campaign.
"Who are these people?" she said as she broke down in tears. "They don't care about us. They don't know what women face in this community, in our clinics. We work with women who don't even know how to chart their menstrual cycle. They don't want to have an abortion, but some become desperate."
Gaylon Alcaraz, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, said Life Always should address the reasons women choose abortion. "A woman once said to me, 'Where are all these people when I need a baby sitter or when I'm looking for a job?' They don't provide support."
Some women objected to the billboard's inclusion of Obama, who supports abortion rights but has voiced concern over the high abortion rate for blacks.
Broden said that Obama's image was used to show that future black leaders are being aborted at an alarming rate. "We just want everyone to know that the potential of a community lies in its children," said Broden.
Hayes, in a phone interview later, said he supports more crisis centers to help women choose to not have abortions. But he said women considering abortions should be mandated to have sonograms before the procedure.
"I know it's a tough decision," said Hayes. "We want to make sure they really know what they're doing."
Broden wouldn't say how much the billboard project costs. He said that a Chicago billboard company offered to donate to the project once owners heard that some Life Always billboards had been taken down in New York's Soho neighborhood.
Those billboards read: "The most dangerous place for African Americans is in the womb."
(c) 2011, Chicago Tribune.
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