Life Issues Institute conducted an interview with Catherine Davis, the Founder and President of The Restoration Project. She often partners with the National Black Prolife Coalition, the Network of Politically Active Christians, and the Frederick Douglass Foundation in an ongoing effort to educate Americans about the issues that are impacting the Black community.
Q: Could you tell our readers how you became pro-life?
In 1987, I went to a Bible study, and on this particular Tuesday, they were talking about abortion. At the end of that teaching, I was literally paralyzed in my guilt [from having two abortions], and I could not move. The only thing I could do was sit there and cry. And I was trying to process through my brain: “Can God ever forgive me for what I did?” Because at that point, I couldn’t forgive myself.
I have some of the most caring, wonderful pastors in the world. And they recognized immediately what was happening and what I was going through. Then Bishop Boone gave me the book Grand Illusions and said, “Read this and go do some- thing about it.” That’s when I got involved in the Pro-life Movement.
Q: When did you first learn about the genocidal impact of the abortion industry?
After I read Grand Illusions and was introduced to Margaret Sanger’s Negro Project, I began to do research. In 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided, my mom and I were talking about the case, and she laughed and said, “There’s not a black woman in America who would ever kill her baby that way, given our history.” I wanted to see if I could still say that or if that had changed. And I began to look at the numbers. The more I looked at the numbers, the more I saw that not only was the black community getting abortions, but the numbers were lopsided.
Q: What are your thoughts on where the black community is at today regarding abortion?
We’re at genocide right now. In every state that reports by race, black women are leading in the number of abortions. Whether you’re talking about New York City, where more black babies are aborted than are born alive – for every 1,000 black babies born there, 1,489 are aborted – or you’re talking about Virginia, where blacks are about 12-13% of the population but get 42% of the abortions, it’s genocidal.
And I believe it’s genocidal by design. I like to say, when Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers say there’s no racial impetus to it they are spitting in our faces and calling it rain. I know the difference between spit and rain, and there is a racial impetus and it is decimating the black community today.
Q: What advice do you have for the pro-life community today?
The problem that we face as pro-lifers is that we give knee-jerk reactions to what the pro-abortion community says. We need to stand strong and tell the truth. It’s not a fetus, it’s a baby. Today, they don’t even try to convince you anymore that it’s not a baby, they tell you upfront, “A women shouldn’t have to be pregnant if she doesn’t want to be pregnant.” Well no, we need to fix that.
We need to tell the truth about what it means to have children and what a blessing they are. We need to say what God says. And if we start doing that and stop being reactionary, what gets cemented in the hearts and minds of the people is a regard for children. They will begin to believe children are blessings, not curses. Once they start saying that, and we start talking about what God says, it will dispel the lies of the abortion movement.
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