Exclusive — Alveda King: New Abortion Laws Are ‘not to Punish Women, but to Give the Baby Civil Rights’

Dr. Alveda King, director of Priests for Life’s Civil Rights for the Unborn project and the niece of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., told Breitbart News that the recently passed pro-life laws in states like Georgia and Alabama seek to grant “civil rights” to babies in the womb and protect women, not punish them.

King offered her remarks on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour.

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Mansour opened the interview by reflecting on how Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail could be read today in response to pro-life conservatives who are concerned that Alabama’s recently passed Human Life Protection Act could harm Republicans in the 2020 election.

“I hope it isn’t presumptuous of me for saying this, but when I was hearing people saying, ‘This is untimely and this is unwise,’ the first thing that came to my mind was your uncle’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Mansour said. “He makes a brilliant argument in that letter that the time to fight against injustice is always right now.”

King agreed and pointed to another famous quote from her uncle: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“America is right to be concerned,” King said of the abortion debate around the nation, but she argued that the pro-life laws in states like Alabama and George “won’t hurt” Republicans in 2020.

“Now, people are saying, ‘They’re going to put women in jail.’ Absolutely not.,” King said. “But doctors who insist on continuing to abort little people in the womb will have to answer, because the doctors themselves medically know that that is a person. That is a human being. Ultrasound shows that to all of us, now, and science has caught up with us.”

King said, “In most instances, mothers have been either coerced — sometimes even [in the case of] rape or incest — and are forced into abortions, or at least confused and under stress and pressure. So we know we want to protect the baby and the mother.”

Alabama’s new abortion law “is not to punish women,” stated King, “but it is to stop and give the baby civil rights. So women won’t be hauled off to jail.”

King reflected on her own experiences with abortion in describing the pro-life movement’s commitment to protecting children and not punishing mothers.

“I had abortions years ago,” said King, “and I said, ‘If you really start jumping on the women, you’ll probably want to come after me, but he Lord has forgiven me.’ We’re not going on a headhunt for women with the law in Alabama.”

King affirmed that these pro-life laws are aimed at “making sure women and babies are protected.” But they are also about justice, she said.

“It’s a push for justice, not a rush for justice, because it’s been a long path from 1973 until now,” she said, referring to the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision on abortion.

“It’s a push for justice [and] a call for justice, not just for babies in the womb, but the mothers have been deceived, as well. I know I was deceived,” said King. “Now it’s causing the courts to have to reexamine some very bad laws.”

“Is the only objective overturn Roe v. Wade?” asked King. “No. The objective is to give the babies civil rights, to protect and to help the mothers, and then to strengthen the family. That is the goal. It’s not too harsh. It’s not too much. It’s not too extreme.”

King went on, “People say, ‘Well, what about rape?’ Well, two wrongs don’t make a right. You kill an innocent person and do further harm the woman, but you don’t deal with the person that did it. All of that has to be examined.”

“You need a compassionate community while all of this is going on. You need to be able to serve these mothers [and] serve these babies. If they actually cannot be ready to raise that child, then put that child into adoptive situations that are not going to abuse the children in these horrendous foster home kind of scenarios,” King said. “All of that has to be regulated, but you have to have a compassionate community that is ready to answer and to help.”

King explained how her own experiences with abortion left an indelible mark on her life.

“I had abortions in the 1970s,” recalled King. “One was coerced and done by my doctor — a D&C in the office — when abortion was still illegal. I had had a live birth in 1970. I became pregnant a little later and went back to ask for a pregnancy test, and he said, ‘You don’t need it, let’s see.’ Instead of doing the pregnancy test, he did a D&C in his office. He was playing God. We found out later he was affiliated with Planned Parenthood.”

King warned of the physical harm abortion procedures can cause women and described her own post-abortion medical complications.

“In 1973, that doctor sent me to Planned Parenthood,” King said. “They had changed their name from Birth Control League to Planned Parenthood, and [he said,] ‘They’ll be your friends. Don’t talk to the people in your church or your family. Just talk to them. They’ll tell you what to do.’ I tried a birth control method that left me vulnerable to problems with my breasts and my cervix.”

“I got pregnant again in ’73 and was kind of pressured to have an abortion, and so that was my second abortion, right after Roe v. Wade became legal,” King said. “Then I had a miscarriage later because of the damage done to my body.”

King shared, “Blessedly, in mid-70s, my grandfather who had told my mother when I was in my mother’s womb in 1950, she wanted to do a procedure for an exploration, which would have been a D&C to end my life. He said, ‘No, I saw her in a dream three years ago, and she has bright skin and bright red hair. She’s going to bless many people.’ So when I was about to get another abortion in the mid-1970s, I mentioned it to my granddaddy and he said, ‘You can’t abort that baby. That’s my great-grandchild.’ So these are the things I went through personally.”

“How can I think that abortion is wrong when I have actually had them?” asked King. “Because the abortions hurt me, and I don’t want to see other women hurt, and I don’t want to see other babies die.”

King touched on the pushback against the Georgia and Alabama laws coming from the Hollywood left.

“Many people in Hollywood are not shouting out the abortions they’re glad they had. For the ones who are, I would even dare to suggest that they have suppressed that pain so deeply that they don’t know it’s there.”

Mansour said, “Many in Planned Parenthood will say, ‘[It’s] because of the pro-life movement that people feel grief. If the pro-lifers weren’t there, they wouldn’t feel any grief.’”

“That’s not true. They hide it,” King replied, explaining that she spent years avoiding thinking about her own abortions. “When I did [think about them], unfortunately I would go have a drink of bourbon. I don’t drink anything like that now, except maybe the holidays, a nice kosher glass of wine or something like that. But before ’83, I couldn’t sleep without the alcohol.”

Elements of the “pro-choice” movement are “anti-life,” King said. 

“They say pro-choice, but they’re anti-life and they’re anti-birth — they have been very clever for far too long, but thankfully there are those of us — we are not mean-spirited, we are not judgmental, we’re not accusing anybody — we just want to see people heal. That’s what ‘anti-abortion’ [and] ‘pro-life’ means.”

Opponents of abortion must be compassionate in engaging their detractors, King advised. She described the national consensus on abortion as changing.

“As we continue to assure and make opportunities for those who are vulnerable to talk without guilt or condemnation, [we must] have help available,” advised King. “So we are having these conversations. Many people who said they were totally pro-choice — which meant they were supporting abortion in every state of the life of baby in the womb and maybe even when it came out — are beginning to reverse that and change a little bit.”

King went on, “A lot of these post-abortive mothers are feeling a little safer discussing their experiences. So our fathers regret lost fatherhood. There are grandparents who are harmed. Society is harmed. Even down to the economy. Social security — the reason it’s at risk is because there are not enough people because many of them have been either aborted or put into jail and not working.”

“Too much damage has been done to our people here in America, and that’s from the womb to the tomb,” she said.

King implored pregnant women considering abortions to choose life: “We can love both of you. Neither you nor your baby has to lose your lives.”

King also responded to a hypothetical situation in which a 12-year-old girl might find herself pregnant from a rape or incest. 

“I have to remind the person that you’ve got two innocent people here,” King said. “That 12-year-old is innocent. The baby in her womb is innocent. Two wrongs cannot make a right. If the baby is aborted, that will not heal the rape of the mother of that child. Also, in most cases, the perpetrator gets way when the abortion is done, because there’s no evidence of who the perpetrator was, either. So you’ve got two innocent people who’ve been terribly harmed, that’s the the 12-year-old girl and the child in her womb.”

King added, “If she’s unable to be that [child’s] mother — and she should not be forced nor required to — that child should have a safe adoption and that young mother should be allowed to heal, because we know there’s genuine scientific evidence that abortion harms the body of the mother. If an abortion is forced, it can deal with her mammary system, her reproductive health, her mental health and all of that.”

King concluded, “Two wrongs do not make a right. The death of the baby will not heal the wounds of the mother. We want to say there are two patients, here. There are two victims, here: the mother and the baby. The baby is a person, as well, an innocent person. … It’s two human beings.”

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