Massachusetts News
By Curt Lovelace

February 1--Alveda King is often asked what her famous uncle would say about abortion. Without hesitation she answers, "Martin Luther King would have supported life. Life was precious to him." 

Alveda King reiterated this answer before an overflow crowd at Faneuil Hall on the day before the celebration of Martin Luther King Day.

The event, however, was not a typical Martin Luther King Day rally. She was the keynote speaker at the 27th Annual Interfaith Assembly for Life, sponsored by Massachusetts Citizens For Life. She told the crowd that she has enthusiastically been involved in the pro-life movement for 22 years. Prior to that time, she explained, she was "something of a women’s libber." Pregnant, she went to the doctor’s office and got a sonogram, a picture of her unborn baby. "That’s when it clicked," she explained. That’s when she realized that unborn children were precious little lives in need of protection.

In his introduction of King, Ray Neary, President of Citizens for Life, told the audience that despite, "having experienced bombings and assassinations as a result of her race, she refuses to forget the unborn, who are also a part of the civil rights movement."

With impeccable civil rights credentials of her own, Alveda King said, "This is not a new battle. Whenever there is a great movement of faith, the unborn and the newly born are always put at risk." She pointed to both Moses and Jesus Christ as her examples.
 

Sounding like a revival preacher, Ms. King exhorted the audience to remember that the church cannot be silent on this issue. She said there is a lot of work to be done. "It’s a sensitive issue," she said, "when we tell people that what they’re involved in is sin." Calling the faithful to action, King said that they should remember that even after an abortion, there are still living people who need help. "We need to minister to those people who are still right here – the grieving momma and daddy and grandparents."

As a college professor, King often has students ask to speak to her in private about abortions – usually after the fact. Women, and men, tell her about the pain they felt when they realized that the baby – their baby – was no longer there. "We need to minister to those who have had abortions, those who choose not to and those who haven’t been involved in sexual activities, yet." This last group is a particular focus for King, who told an appreciative audience that, "Satan hates virgins." 

King, who has been an active member of the civil rights movement since the early 1960s, is also an author and an educator. A former member of the Georgia House of Representatives, she is the founder of King for America, a faith-based civil rights organization, with a primary focus on educational issues. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute in Arlington, Virginia. One year after her famous uncle was murdered, her father, the Rev. A.D. King was also assassinated.

Also on the program for the Interfaith Assembly were Monsignor William Helmick, of St. Theresa Church in Roxbury, Rev. Thomas Lee of the Boston Chinese Evangelical Church and Rev. Jeremy Montgomery of the Boston Ten-Point Coalition. State Sen. Marian Walsh brought greetings from the legislature.
 

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