Controversial Anti-Abortion Billboard Targeting Black Women Gets Taken Down

Heroic Media, Life Always, Controversial Anti-Abortion Billboard Gets Taken Down

For three days, the image (pictured above) of a beautiful little girl stood 29-feet high and 16-feet wide over the Soho district with the words:

"The Most Dangerous Place for an African American Is In the Womb."

As criticism of the racially motivated billboard, labeling the wombs of African-American women "dangerous," reached a fever pitch, Louisiana-based Lamar Advertising ordered it removed from the corner of Sixth Avenue and Watts Street, in New York City.

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The Texas-based organization, Life Always, responsible for the blatantly prejudicial message also forgot one small detail:

They didn't get permission from the child's mother to use her daughter's image.

Two years ago, when Tricia Fraser took her four children to take modeling photos, she thought that she would not see the pictures again. Fraser says that she had no idea about the ad until a friend told her about it, and in disbelief, she and 6-year-old Anissa Fraser, went to see for themselves.

"[My daughter] said, 'Look mommy, it's me!'" Ms. Frazier told Fox5 News. "That's as far as it goes with her. I would never endorse something like that, especially with my child's image. I know what I went in to that shoot for, and that's not something that I would have agreed to."

According to Life Always spokesperson Marisaa Gabrysch, "The image was properly licensed through a reputable stock image service. We'll be looking in to the origin of the image and are certainly open to talking to the family directly if they have any concerns."

"It's down," Peter Costanza, the general manager for Lamar Advertising, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "Why did I take it down? Yesterday, somebody came in to the restaurant [Lupe's East L.A. Kitchen] harassing the waiters and waitresses. I don't want any violence to happen around the buildings there."

According to a statement issued by the Women of Color Policy Network, NYU Wagner, Mr. Costanza responded affirmatively that they would remove the billboard in direct response to phone calls and letters of criticism.

In response to the controversial billboard, NARAL Pro-Choice America spokeswoman Mary Alice Carr said, "They're attacking women for choosing abortion while simultaneously destroying family planning. Their hypocrisy is as large and as obnoxious as this billboard.

"The issue here is that they are doing a campaign, targeting one group of women and making them feel guilty and shameful about family choices that they are making," Carr continues. "You can't take a woman and lift her out of her experience."

According to Rebecca Wind, a spokeswoman for the Guttmacher Institute, it is true that "African-Americans have high abortion rates compared with other demographic groups." However, the disparity stems primarily from "lack of adequate services" in many black communities, which "has resulted in more unintended pregnancies."

Civil Rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton was prepared to go to war on the campaign:

"The billboard was offensive, especially during Black History Month, and I had intended to hold a press conference Friday in front of the billboard to protest the message of racial profiling and against a woman"s right to choose," Sharpton said Thursday.

This is a victory for the pro-choice movement, albeit a measured one. The poisonous rhetoric polluting these campaigns is where the problems lies, not with the underlying message itself. I don't believe that pro-birth advocates are even aware of what that billboard message conveys or how it subliminally reflects society's low opinion of African-American women.

If you really want to have a relevant conversation, let's discuss the hypocrisy of conservatives donating to these organizations, while simultaneously advocating for severe cuts in social programs and maintaining a strong opposition to improving health care for low-income families.

Let's talk about the refusal to see women, of any color, as the only ones who control their bodies, demonstrating that misogyny is alive and well.

I abhor the history of Planned Parenthood, and as such, would never utilize their services for even so much as a pap smear; however, they do serve a purpose. Eighty-two percent of their clients receive services to prevent pregnancy, not terminate them.

That is a fact that many "pro-life" organizations like to brush over as they target the reproductive rights of African-American women.

If pro-life groups are genuinely concerned with the well-being of African-American children, the key lies in first being concerned with the mental, physical, emotional and societal health of their parents.

The problem has never been about empowering women with choices, but attempting to shame them in to one.