‘99% of White People Would Force Their Daughter to Abort Baby If the Father Is Black’
Sara Malm, Daily Mail (London), March 5, 2014
An Alabama Democrat representative has said that white people would force their child to have an abortion if the father was black.
Rep. Alvin Holmes made the comments during a debate on a bill in the Alabama state house which would see the state implement the toughest abortion laws in the U.S.
Targeting Republican lawmakers, Holmes claimed that ’99 per cent’ of white representatives who are against abortion would change their mind ‘if their daughter got pregnant by a black man’.
Democrat Holmes, first elected in 1974, said that ‘not one in 100,000’ white people would allow their daughter to have a mixed-race baby.
‘If you asked the people in here now to raise their hands, of those who are against abortion, 99 per cent of all of the white people in here gonna raise their hand that they are against abortion,’ Rep Holmes said during the debate.
‘On the other hand, 99 per cent of the whites that are sitting in here now, if they daughter got pregnant by a black man, they gonna make their daughter have an abortion. They ain’t gonna let her have the baby. ‘
A recording of his speech, published by Birmingham News, also includes Rep Holmes turning to an unnamed white female representative asking her if she would ‘allow’ her child to have a mixed-race baby.
When the woman’s reply is positive, he retorts: ‘Well, I need to commend you then. There’s not one in 100,000 that would do that.’
After a heated debate, the Alabama House of Representatives approved the bill, which bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, something which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
Bill sponsor Republican Representative. Mary Sue McClurkin said Tuesday that a heartbeat is universally accepted as an indication of life.
She later compared her bill to Brown vs. Board of Education, the court case which ended the legal segregation of public schools in 1954.
If the bill wins approval, the legislation that moves next to the Senate would tie Alabama with North Dakota as having the most stringent abortion law in the country.
It is a direct challenge to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion up until a fetus is considered viable. Opponents called the bill blatantly unconstitutional.
North Dakota approved a similar law last year, but a federal judge put it on hold while the legal challenge plays out in court.
