The executive director of the Rebecca Project for Justice, a pro-life organization, has accused the Washington Post of radically twisting her words in a “fake news article” on abortion last month.
“The Washington Post falsely ascribed to me the view that the Court’s decision in Dobbs will open the door to forced sterilizations by removing constitutional protections for women’s bodily autonomy,” rape survivor Elaine Riddick said in an August 19 interview with The Pillar Catholic. “My position is, in fact, the opposite.”
Riddick, who was raped as a 13-year-old and then sterilized against her will by the state of North Carolina after bringing her baby to term, said that the Washington Post twisted her words when “journalist Meena Venkataramanan made my story the centerpiece for her fake news article: ‘She Survived a Forced Sterilization. She fears more could occur post-Roe.’”
“I celebrated and welcomed the overturning of Roe, and I believe abortion should be banned,” Riddick said. “And yet, the Washington Post falsely portrayed me as supporting a pro-choice agenda even though they clearly knew, and I stated in the interview, that I am against abortion and am pro-life.”
In her interview, Riddick said that pro-life black Americans are regularly bullied and intimidated into silence by the progressive establishment.
Mother and Baby (Camille Tokerud/Getty Images)
“Most of us in the Black and African-American community respect God and we respect life,” she stated. Yet, “We are silent about abortion or tacitly support oppressive polices because our jobs will be threatened and funding for projects will become non-existent.”
“We feel we do not have a voice to speak our truth about abortion and other cruel reproductive health practices without repercussions,” she added.
Moreover, African-Americans suffer under “the heads of our civil society organizations, like the NAACP, who seem to only parrot and rubber stamp the dominant, harmful reproductive agenda.”
Those black Americans who dare to speak up are ridiculed and ostracized, she declared.
“Just look at how a brilliant and powerful man like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is constantly vilified and attacked by Democrats and progressives,” she said.
Many black Americans feel that “their only viable alternative is to go along with a cruel reproductive health agenda of killing Black babies by the millions and marketing dangerous hormonal contraceptives that significantly increase the risk of breast cancer in our communities,” she said, “while deliberately ignoring the glaring fact that we have the highest mortality rates from breast cancer and the highest rates of abortion.”
