NEW YORK -- Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, and Dr. Alveda C. King, full-time Director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life and niece of Martin Luther King Jr., will join Catherine Davis, founder of the Restoration Project and leader of the Selma Project, for a pro-life prayer rally and march June 19-20 in Selma, Alabama.
The event will use the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth – the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the United States – to highlight the tragedy of abortion in the African-American community. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and Bloody Sunday.
“When my uncle and other leaders marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, they were marching against the injustice of racism,” Dr. King said. “Today we march because since 1973 the unborn in this country have been denied the most fundamental human right, the right to life.”
Fr. Pavone noted that Dr. King joined the team at Priests for Life in 2003 after the two met at the March for Life and discussed its similarities to the civil rights marches of the 1960s.
“The pro-life movement is the civil rights movement of the 21st century,” he said.
Dr. King noted that Priests for Life and its African-American Outreach led several Pro-Life Freedom Rides in the South in 2010 to draw attention to the way the abortion industry has targeted African-Americans for extinction. By returning to the Pettus Bridge just three months after the anniversary of the 1965 civil rights march there, organizers hope to once again underscore that connection between pro-life and civil rights.
The Selma Project also will highlight the unscrupulous practices of abortionists nationwide, and the fact that abortion is the most unregulated surgical industry. A local abortionist, Samuel Lett, runs the Central Alabama Women’s Clinic, which should be licensed by the state because more than 10 abortions are performed there each month. But Lett denies performing abortions, and although a coalition of pro-life leaders has documented evidence that he does, the Alabama Department of Health has yet to initiate any kind of action against him.
"This Juneteenth has the potential to be the most vibrant and historic observance yet of this important day, because awareness is growing, among blacks and whites alike, of the unspeakable devastation wrought by abortion,” Fr. Pavone said. “Nobody who honors the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and nobody who claims to admire the civil rights movement, can ignore abortion any longer, or be silent any longer about it. In Selma and across America, the violence must stop now!"
The rally will begin at 7 p.m. CT June 19 at Christ the King Church in Selma. On June 20, marchers will gather on the Selma side of the bridge at 8:15 a.m. CT and walk across the bridge toward Montgomery.
For more information on the event, go to www.JuneteenthAAO.com
To arrange an interview with Fr. Pavone or Dr. King, call Leslie Palma at 347-286-7277 or email her at leslie@priestsforlife.org