Ten years ago, the two of us published and many leaders signed a letter titled “The Beloved Community and the Unborn” to remind the public that the dream of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. remained unfulfilled in regard to the most vulnerable human beings, the children in the womb.
Sadly, that is still true today.
When King spoke of the creation of a “beloved community” during a speech in 1956, he was telling black people that a new day was coming in which they would not be treated as second-class citizens. That dream has not been fully realized, but as imperfect a union as we are, things are immeasurably better for black people in 2021 than they were in 1956.
But they are worse, far, far worse for children in the first nine months of their lives.
As we wrote in our 2011 letter, King had been calling on each of us to fight against poverty, discrimination, and violence in every form. “As human history unfolds,” we wrote, “the forms that discrimination and violence take will evolve and change. Yet our commitment to overcome them must not change, and we must not shrink from the work of justice, no matter how unpopular it may become.”
The two of us came together over our shared conviction that ending abortion is the civil rights cause of the late 20th and 21st centuries. The unborn are those who are not seen as fully human, and unlike King’s followers, they cannot speak for themselves. They need us to be their voices, their advocates in legislatures, and their intercessors in church.
They need us because though we can see their humanity in all its wonder while they are still in the womb, there are those who still deny that humanity. There are those who say their human rights are secondary to those of the mother who carries them. There are even those who say that babies born alive do not need to be protected.
Some states, such New York, Vermont, and Illinois, have passed extreme abortion laws that allow abortion up until birth, do not mandate life-saving care for those who survive abortion, and refuse to see the child in the womb as a second victim when a mother is murdered. The danger is that more states will pass laws like these and that even the few protections for the unborn on the federal level will be reversed.
And some abortion advocates, in a persistent disconnect that is hard to fathom, adhere to an extreme abortion ideology while continuing to voice support for King’s beliefs. Some outright deny he was pro-life, while most just ignore the issue. And the media does not want to challenge this blind spot.
To overlook the unborn is to ignore the plight of an entire class of people. Allowing the slaughter of innocents to continue means the unfinished work of King’s dream will never be complete.
How can the dream survive if we murder the children? The simple answer is that it can’t.
Like King, we believe that the future will be brighter for justice. As a sign of that hope, this statement, “The Beloved Community and the Unborn,” was placed in the time capsule that was included in the new monument to King in Washington, D.C.
We declare today that unborn children, too, are members of the beloved community, that our destiny is linked with theirs, and that they deserve justice, equality, and protection.
We can begin the work of including the unborn no matter what ethnic, religious, or political affiliation we have. None of that has to change in order for us to embrace King’s affirmation of the sacredness of all human life. It simply means that in our efforts to set free the oppressed, we include the children in the womb.
You can find and also sign “The Beloved Community and the Unborn” letter at CivilRightsForTheUnborn.org.
Alveda King (@AlvedaCKing) and Frank Pavone (@frfrankpavone) are contributors to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. King is the director of civil rights for the unborn at Priests for Life and the niece of Martin Luther King Jr. Pavone is the national director of Priests for Life.
