Victory! Anti-Abortion Billboard Targeting Blacks to Come Down

New Yorkers have just about seen and heard everything, so it takes a lot to get them riled up. But when an anti-abortion billboard recently debuted in Soho, New York liberals fiercely objected.

That’s because the billboard - put up at Watts Street and Avenue of the Americas by Texas group Life Always - featured a picture of a small black girl combined with this message: “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”

The billboard so offended New York City Councilwoman Letitia James and her legislative aide Aja Worthy-Davis that yesterday they launched a Change.org petition targeting Life Always and billboard owner Lamar Advertising, asking them to remove it. Later in the day, Lamar Advertising announced that it would take the billboard down.

“This was a dirty attack on Planned Parenthood and on our reproductive services for women,” Councilwoman James told Change.org. “To mask it under the guise of being concerned about black children was offensive to me.”

Victory!

Many might wonder the basis for the statement made in the billboard. Life Always claimed that “the most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb” because the abortion rate among black women is disproportionately high in both New York City and across the nation.

But rather than explore the socioeconomic factors that contribute to this trend, Life Always took to using a billboard that suggested black women are harming black children. Moreover, on its website Life Always claims that Planned Parenthood is targeting minority neighborhoods, despite the Guttmacher Institute’s finding in January that this is patently false.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed an amendment to revoke federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Plus, in early February, news broke that an anti-abortion group called Live Action targeted Planned Parenthood by secretly videotaping a staffer who explained to a couple posing as a pimp and underage prostitute how to obtain services. Planned Parenthood promptly fired the worker. The Life Always billboard in Soho stood just a half-mile away from a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Councilwoman James said that she’s pleasantly surprised Lamar Advertising announced that it would remove the controversial billboard so quickly. Just a few hours after aide Worthy-Davis published the Change.org petition calling for its removal, more than 100 people had signed on to let Lamar and Life Always know that the billboard offended them.  The idea to use Change.org as a vehicle to petition the organizations was a constituent’s idea, according to James. The emails from Change.org members and the phone calls Lamar Advertising received from concerned New Yorkers both likely factored into the company’s decision to drop the billboard, James said.

The victory “speaks to the power of social media, the power of angry women, and that in New York, we won’t tolerate attacks on our reproductive freedom."

Thanks for taking action everyone!

Photo Credit: Life Always