It's all about fighting for LIFE

Sometimes we activist oldsters wonder who is going to carry the load as we drift off into retirement. Our friend Renee Bracey Sherman is sure doing the job, struggling for justice on multiple fronts and bringing struggles -- women, black people, male people -- together. We can trust her to her to carry the work beyond what her courtesy aunties had yet been able to envision. In today's New York Times, she's published a stinging, truthful opinion piece:

The Right to (Black) Life
... If we choose to have an abortion, we are cast as villains by anti-abortion campaigns that tap into the trauma of our country’s racial history. Outside of clinics, I often hear protesters shout racial slurs and say things like “unborn black lives matter” when black people walk past them.

This isn’t new. Anti-abortion activists have long said that the most dangerous place for a black child is in the womb. They believe that abortion, not police brutality, is the civil rights issue of our time.

But we are stereotyped and called welfare queens if we choose to continue a pregnancy we cannot afford. In addition, black women are ostracized for having children “too young” and for having kids that society deems “illegitimate.”

Then, regardless of the life we provide for our children, if they are killed by police officers, our parenting decisions will inevitably be criticized.

From conception until death, damned if we do and damned if we don’t. ...

Read it all.