"In advising men and women on questions of personal behavior 50 years ago, Uncle Martin sounded no different than a conservative Christian preacher does now," Dr. Alveda King once said.
"He was pro-life, pro-abstinence before marriage, and based his views on the unchanging Word of the Bible. Today, Planned Parenthood would condemn Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of the 'religious right’.”
Not everyone agrees that the late Dr. King was against abortion, but his niece claims that any other stance would be out-of-character for him.
"Martin was a minister of God," she told CNSNews.com. "Martin would say, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' So how is it going to be just to murder somebody and rip them up and burn them with chemicals? He said, 'The Negro cannot win if he's willing to sacrifice the futures of his children for immediate personal comfort and safety.'" Alveda has come under fire from some black activists for claiming her uncle was pro-life when he was alive - and would be part of the pro-life movement if he were alive today.
Hilary Shelton, Washington bureau director and senior vice president of advocacy for the NAACP said he believes Martin Luther King, Jr. supported "a woman's right to control her reproductive life."
“What I know of Dr. King’s vision is Dr. King held a very strong position that didn’t speak to the issue of abortion at all," Shelton told CNS in 2010. "You can try to read into it if you like, but his position was that women should have control of their reproductive lives.”
Many of Alveda's critics point to the Margaret Sanger Award that was given to the Dr. King in 1966 as proof of his support for abortion rights.
However, this article, appearing on LifeNews.com, points out that in 1966, Planned Parenthood was still maintaining a public position of being anti-abortion. For example, in a pamphlet they distributed in 1963 entitled, "Is Birth Control Abortion?" they claimed that "abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun." It goes on to warn that abortion is "dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it."
But Alveda says the fact that her uncle, who believed in birth control, accepted an award from Planned Parenthood in 1966, does not prove that her uncle supported abortion. In fact, he never even attended the awards ceremony but sent his wife, Coretta, to accept it in his stead.
"Mrs. Coretta Scott King knew that her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was pro-life," Alveda said. "Mrs. Coretta King, who was pro-abortion, took and did read the (acceptance) speech, and accepted on behalf of her husband."
After analyzing Dr. King's acceptance speech, Alveda concluded that based on the words spoken by her uncle during his lifetime, the speech and a subsequent letter thanking Planned Parenthood for the award were not written by him.
"He did not write the speech. He did not deliver the speech," she said. "There was a thank-you letter with what appears to be his signature on it, but he had other people who signed his letters in his office, so you can't even really say he signed it."
Alveda, who is the daughter of Martin's brother, the late Rev. A.D. King, is no stranger to the fight for unpopular causes. She grew up embroiled in the civil rights movement, and suffered through the bombing of her family home in Birmingham, Alabama, and her father's church office in Louisville, Kentucky.
She is currently an ordained minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and serves as Director of African American Outreach for Gospel of Life, headed up by Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life. A former college professor, she holds a Master of Arts degree in Business Management from Central Michigan University and an honorary doctorate of Laws from St. Anselm College.
She believes the pro-life movement is a continuation of the struggle for civil rights in the U.S.
"Perhaps the most compelling issue of all is the life of the unborn," she says. "Faith in God, and the commitment to fulfill His will for our lives -- not faith in government bureaucracy - is the key to positive action. Have faith in God!"
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