When, when, WHEN will people learn?

If you know me personally or follow me here regularly at MOC, you already know: I am a proud, card-carrying, fist-rocking, down-for-my-sisters womanist. I am personally pro-life, but endorse a woman’s right to choose and always vote as such. I don’t excuse misogynoir, women who try whitesplaining themselves and/or allow their narrow-minded agendas to cast my words to mean one thing when I clearly stated otherwise. My vocabulary is immense, my pen game is on-point and therefore, Irefuse to debate people who can’t comprehend, come with facts or apply a basic bare minimum of common sense. Yet, as usual, someone tried it.

Apparently, a pro-lifer (I will maintain her privacy by calling her ‘Miss Millie’) felt some type of way about yesterday’s Woman’s March column —which it doesn’t seem a though she fully read—and tried to lecture me, a Black woman, about OUR US abortion rates and my choice to cover an event that she didn’t agree with because, in her narrow estimation despite the fact she didn’t bother to march her azz anywhere she disapproved of the protesters’ alleged methods and pro-lifers were not somehow not allowed to participate. Seriously.

As always, I appreciate readers who are moved enough to write, I enjoy learning different perspectives and I am also grown enough to debate matters civilly. But when all you want to step to me with is empty rhetoric, circular arguments, condescension and then try to equate reasonable stances with illogical outcomes, you will catch a block. Below is our e-mail exchange and, um, yeah……I don’t think there’s a question of which one of us shut who down (the most egregious examples of her ignorance/arrogance/whitesplaining are bolded and asides for those reading this post are noted *like this*).

Hello Lorrie,

Are you aware that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, believed in eugenics and wanted to eradicate negroes because she saw them as unfit? Do you know that today PP targets poor black neighborhoods to set up shop and that black babies are aborted in high percentages *I guess they’re the only faction in the US that does*?

Woooooow…..presuming much? Exactly. This is what I sent in return:

Hi Miss Millie,

Thanks for taking the time to read my article and respond. I believe that people coming together to support causes and empower one another is a positive move. There may be some folks in the crowd who resort to vulgar ways to express themselves, but that’s not what Misty and Ian did. My focus of the article was their motivations, their participation and their reflections. None of us should be held responsible for the actions of strangers and the ‘bad apples’ in place shouldn’t be enough of a deterrent to distract from the larger dilemma at hand: the diminishing rights of minority groups.

Yes, I am aware that Sanger founded PP and of her endorsement of eugenics *here is a great article re the issue*. I don’t agree with her stance, but what I do agree with is how the organization has consistently empowered the health of low-income women: black, white, latino or whomever. Removing their funding and eliminating access to those who need it is currently the most harmful action, not the ignorant philosophy of a long-dead extremist. In the information age, how can people justify denying women the most basic of health services? What is the motivation and what purpose is fulfilled? Certainly not one that improves anything.

And as for pro-lifers ‘not being allowed to participate,’ when has permission and endorsement ever mattered? When has anyone’s approval ever stopped them from publishing private personal info of doctors, screaming at pro-choice supporters and displaying graphic images of aborted fetuses? I have yet to see a marcher with an actual vagina affixed to their heads, but anyone anywhere can recall witnessing [finding images of pro-life demonstrations] the stomach-turning pro-lifer signs.

Again Miss Millie, thank you for reading and I appreciate your viewpoint. I just find it odd that you, as a woman and mother, find more at fault with the methods and alleged motivations of those protesting than with the anti-women actions of the lawmakers and the damaging, deadly consequences that are occurring as a result.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t done: Miss Millie’s final response proved that one, she has a single-minded agenda (fetuses over fully-formed adults, my morals are better than your morals, family planning equals genocide, etc.) and two, she lives and operates in a world plagued with “alternative facts.” Also, Ms. Conjecture seems to believe that just because she feels a certain way, her emotions and opinions outweigh facts and ‘receipts,’ which I kindly supplied in the form of links for reference. Instead of attempting to broaden her perspective, however, Miss Millie doubled down on dumb, summarily called me a ‘baby killer’ and as a result, now fumes alone and unacknowledged in Spamville. Back to her last gasp and my final drag-down already in progress……

Hi Lorrie,

As a woman and mother, I find it hard to believe that you can turn a blind eye to killing in the name of healthcare and women’s ‘rights’ and to the deliberate targeting of black children. If you support PP then you support abortion since they’re the largest abortion provider in the country. And you presume that because someone is prolife they do nothing to stop racism or economic depression or help pregnant women, for that matter *facts anyone*? What has the pro abortion crowd done for racism and economic depression? What does PP do to help women who choose to keep their babies?
I don’t make you excuses for any lawmakers who promote racism *yet refuse to acknowledge its results* and I don’t know any who want to restrict women’s access to birth control unless, of course, you consider abortion birth control. But the same who don’t want anyone to interfere with their ‘reproductive rights’ want the taxpayer to pay for it *but our subsidizing men’s erectile dysfunction is cool*.
Hope you gain perspective as to why a majority of Americans don’t want to support or pay for the killing of children. Please pray for me as I do you.

SHOTS. FIRED.

This sanctimonious %$#@* basically circumvented context and common damn sense, as if WW don’t have abortions and we invented the procedure. *HARD eye roll* I went to high school with white girls and overheard locker room/bathroom talk that made them sound as if abortions were had in many of their lives more often than sleepovers!!! And any damn way, per the latest stats that Miss Millie willfully overlooked, WP’s population rates are the ones dropping, NOT OURS, and they still abort more often than we do and even become pregnant at lesser rates. I have three children and ZERO abortions, so what factor in that equation adds up to ‘baby killer’?

No. Ma’am. This was where I dropped the mic and sent her a one-way ticket to Spamville……

I never justified ‘killing babies.’ And facts without context become empty rhetoric and talking points. If you truly cared about Black babies you would address the issues that perpetuate racism and the economic depression that is factor of such. You would also know by now that your insistence on circumventing, yet again, the lawmakers who restrict birth control access and the consequences of generational racism. Hope you gain some perspective as you pray and that you have a good weekend.

Poor lil’ Tink-Tink. Stay special Miss Millie, toodles…….