Apology adds ‘insult to injury’

To the editor:

I thought there was no way that Mayor Larry DeVilbiss could be more insensitive and racist than he was in his remarks at the MLK Day celebration. But he proved me wrong!

His trite “apology” to the community in Sunday’s Frontiersman added insult to injury. Rather than simply apologize, he felt a need to bring his personal position on abortion into the dialog.

He implies that Planned Parenthood takes advantage of black women, forcing them to choose abortion. The underlying assertion is that women of color are not intelligent enough to make their own decisions. (Of course, many politicians seem to believe that no woman is smart enough to make her own health care decisions.)

He wrote that he’s seen “statements that Planned Parenthood planned it that way.” This is absolutely untrue. I can say without reservation that Planned Parenthood did not “plan it that way.” No documented study would support that comment.

DeVilbiss seems totally unaware that many low-income women of all colors rely on the services provided by Planned Parenthood for their women’s health needs. The unfortunate fact that we have so many families of color at the poverty level increases the likely number of black women taking advantage of the women’s health services provided by the nonprofit agency.

Additionally, to imply that Planned Parenthood in any way practices genocide is a defamatory attack on the agency and an insult to all the women who have been patients at Planned Parenthood.

No matter how he attempts to couch his comments, both of DeVilbiss’s statements are insensitive, insulting and racist. The day was intended to honor and remember, not to enter into political discussion. Using the celebration of Dr. King’s birth to tout a personal position on any political issue is entirely inappropriate. To have in any way indicated that black women choose abortion in greater numbers than white women is unfounded and totally out of place in this venue.

MLK Day is a day set aside to celebrate the life and contributions of a martyr to civil rights. To have brought any other purpose to the day was an insult to those present, to those who continue to struggle for equal rights and to the memory of Dr. King.

Carolyn Covington

Palmer