Group Sues for Right to Compare Abortion to KKK Outside of Black History Museum

The guiding principle of the group, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, is that "abortion represents an evil so inexpressible that words fail us when attempting to describe its horror." They've attracted controversy in the past for comparing abortion to numerous historical atrocities, such as the Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields, and lynchings of black Americans. The group says they've specifically chosen the National Museum of African American History & Culture as a protest site because abortion is "black genocide."

"[The National Museum of African American History and Culture] hides from those who visit the museum the fact that abortion is disproportionately harming the African American community," the suit states.

The organization alleges that the museum has violated their First and Fifth Amendment rights to free speech and equal protection, as well as their right to religious freedom, by refusing to allow them to display gory fetus images. In the suit, they claim that their "sincerely held religious beliefs" require them "to publicly proclaim the evil of abortion in order to convert the hearts and minds of those who support or condone abortion, including those who condone abortion by remaining neutral to this grave evil."

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform has included in the complaint 10 of their posters. One juxtaposes a photo of Emmett Till's corpse with an image of a fetus. "The Klan used to kill our children," it reads. "Now Planned Parenthood murders them." Another places an image of an unarmed black man being shot by police beside a photo of a fetus whose arms appear to be raised. A third shows police putting two men into chokeholds, with the caption "I CAN'T BREATHE." Next to this is an image of an aborted fetus. "NEITHER CAN I," reads the text underneath it.

Although the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform is fine with appropriating the language of Black Lives Matter, they seem to be openly opposed to the movement. In the suit, they disparage the museum for promoting Black Lives Matter, claiming the group is "viciously pro-abortion."

As Broadly has previously reported, capitalizing on the cache of BLM and other civil rights movements is a common tactic among anti-abortion activists. "These groups are doing nothing to make sure that black children have the right to an education, have a roof over their head, or can play in the park without being killed," NARAL board member and activist Renee Bracey Sherman explained. "They appropriate the Black Lives Matter phrasing and are trying to capitalize on the political moment, but they don't actually want anything to do with it."

Bracey Sherman further noted that many anti-abortion groups emphasize the fact that black women are five times as likely to have an abortion as white women, but fail to acknowledge the "root cause" for this discrepancy—"which is lack of access to consistent contraception."

In their suit, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform also condemns the museum's celebration of the first African American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who once wrote that the Hyde Amendment was "designed to deprive poor and minority women of the constitutional right to choose abortion. " In the words of the suit, this is the equivalent of "demanding even public funding for the abortions which savage the African American community with black genocide ."

CBR believes that their gruesome photos of aborted fetuses should be inside the museum,
"but if the curators won't tell the story about the impact of abortion on the African American community inside the museum, [the plaintiffs] will tell it outside," the suit states. On their website, CBR says that their lawsuit will work in conjunction with a "congressional lobbying campaign to intended to persuade Congress to condition museum funding on the inclusion of displays addressing the reality of abortion in the African community [sic]."

"Black abortion and the black vote can intersect profoundly at this museum, and we are unlikely to ever again be presented with such an opportunity to save so many lives and influence so many elections at so little expense," the website reads.