jewel bush
When I was driving on Carrollton Avenue yesterday, I was greeted by what I thought was a timely message: “NOLA NEEDS PEACE.” Days after a mass shooting left 19 people injured at a second line on Mother’s Day, no one can dispute the call for peace and an end to the violence that plagues — and numbs — the New Orleans community.
But, then I read the rest of the sign: “NOT MORE ABORTION.”
Huh!?
These large display billboards are sprouting up around town at the hands of the NOLA Needs More Peace, Not More Abortion Coalition, a citywide group of churches and community organizations. This anti-Planned Parenthood crusade is muddling the reality of the violent city we live in and mixing in hot button, pro-life rhetoric to further confuse the issue and not to mention impose religious dogma on the public at large.
The framework for this messaging is illogical, defective and itself violent. It is an assault, a direct attack on a woman’s right to choose what is best for her reproductive health. Messages like this mean to shame rather than inform, to judge rather than help.
New Orleans has a murder rate 10 times the national average and Louisiana has the highest gun violence rate in the United States; and somehow the conclusion is that New Orleans is without peace because of abortions. This is like comparing apples to mushrooms. It plain ole doesn’t make sense.
Abortion is not the problem here. Making abortions illegal or creating stiffer regulations to obtain them have nothing to do with creating a peaceful, violent-free New Orleans. Preventing the circumstances where the need to have an abortion arises is what’s needed, through family planning and birth control to prevent unintended pregnancies. If anything, taking away reproductive health care options and restricting access to preventative health care damns those who are most likely not to have access to preventative care in the first place, which is a bigger public health crisis to our communities than abortion.
More than 27 million minorities under the age of 65 didn’t have medical coverage in 2011, according to the Urban Institute.
When people are desperate and lack educational, economic and healthcare opportunities, the table is set for tragic outcomes. New Orleans needs solutions to end crime and the violence that stems from poverty. Opportunity, access and a higher quality of life for all New Orleanians can help pave the path to peace.
We can get there with good schools for all students, not just those lucky enough or connected enough to land a spot at the few high-performing institutions in the city. New Orleanians need jobs that pay living wages, ones that offer retirement benefits and medical coverage too. New Orleanians need affordable housing and safe communities free from fear of police harassment.
NOLA Needs More Peace, Not More Abortion is part of a local trend of launching misguided marketing campaigns around the city’s troubles instead of using those advertising dollars to cut deep into the marrow of the matter to pluck solutions.
Instead of planting seeds to castrate Planned Parenthood and fighting a Holy War morally oppressing an already depressed populace by shaming and blaming with statistics and data, these advocates should be equally willing to invest in changing and bettering the city.
This effort is about perpetuating patriarchy and controlling the female form, not about peace. It is nothing short of a thinly-veiled shame campaign on the poor and the women of color who use Planned Parenthood’s services.
Put the blame where it lies, on joblessness and the lack of education and healthcare — not abortion.
jewel bush, a New Orleans native, is a writer whose work has appeared in The (Houma) Courier, The Washington Post, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles Magazine, and El Tiempo, a bilingual Spanish newspaper. In 2010, she founded MelaNated Writers Collective, a multi-genre group for writers of color in New Orleans dedicated to cultivating the literary, artistic and professional growth of emerging writers. She is currently communications coordinator for Service Employees International Union Local 21LA. Her three favorite books are Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Catcher in the Rye, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Photo by Thomas Sayers Ellis.
NOLA needs peace – not more stupid billboards that take attention away from the real reasons we have so much violence in this city
We have violence in this city because of the widespread belief that we have a right to demand that unwanted people disappear.
Max- As if snuffing out the person in the womb is not an example of violence. C’mon now brother. If we allow violence to start in the womb, it will bleed over into the family and the streets. We need tangible, well-reasoned solutions to the violence in our city that’s informed by reason, religion, the social sciences, and just straight common sense. Common sense tells us murder allowed within a society can only be a detriment in the long run. Abortion results in three things: broken women, men without moral restraint in a society whose god exists in the pants, and dead babies. Nola needs peace- not more silly comments.
Where do you think the culture of death starts? Look at how many black babies are killed even before they have a chance. It’s a silent genocide. If the babies aren’t worth anything, how are the children & adults worth anything?
Black babies absolutely deserve to be worth something, but this “culture of death” has a LOT more to do with how our culture devalue young black men, not babies. Everyone likes babies.
I gotta say though, you anti-abortion people got some of the weirdest logic I have ever seen. I’ve even taken Christian ethics classes that you all would fail.
Excuse me; what you mean is that everyone likes “babies”. The problem being that the only difference between a loved and wanted “baby” instead of an unwanted “fetus” is someone’s arbitrary decision that you’re either wanted or not.
Abortion only underscores the view that if you’re the wrong kind of human being, you can be thrown away when someone else wants you to be gone. To treat people as disposable is to live in a culture of violence and death.
Good point!
The Christians fight abortions of unplanned pregnancy with the fever of fools! It is just a way that the Catholics and Christians punish the women of the world. There is just no logic to the Pro-life tools. I am glad to see that you, Ms. Jewel Bush see through the right wing BS and have the courage to address it here! A woman should have the right to control what happens to her body and when a mistake is made, have the liberty to do something about it! The Catholic Bishops that went to DC last year should have no political clout – particularly over a woman’s body!
1st off your logic is beyond flawed. No one has the right to do with their own bodies when it crosses the line of others rights and liberties especially the most important of them all life. Now that your do what ever with your own body BS is established as just that, the addition of stopping abortions idea as murder is not judgemental.
For the record, Catholics are Christians
“A woman should have the right to control what happens to her body” This is true. However, an unborn baby has it’s own heartbeat, blood type, DNA, fingerprints, etc. It is NOT the mother’s OWN body. A woman’s “right” to control her body ENDS when it involves the KILLING of another human being. The “FOOL” in this case is not the Christian, but the one who truly believes that an unborn baby is simply a body part like a kidney or gall bladder. THAT, Mr. Bosworth, is foolish!
In my opinion, and in the writings in your King James Bible, A baby is not a baby until birth. Brainwashing by the church has affected your ability to understand that the laws of our country differentiate between a fetus and a baby. You are welcome to your opinion but the law and your bible differ with your “somewhat popular” church BS.
As someone with a B.A. in Bible and Theology, who is currently working on an M.A. Theology, and one who plans to do PhD studies also in theology, let me go ahead and inform you that you’re dead wrong concerning Scripture’s viewpoint about what is in the womb. The Old Testament is replete
with verses affirming that what is inside the womb is a person (Job 10:8-12; Isa. 44:2; Psa. 51:5, 71:5-6, 100:3, 22:9-10; 139; Gen. 25:22; Jer. 1:5). Personhood is extended rhetorically throughout the OT to those in the womb. The NT also teaches the same (Matt. 1:18; Luke 1:39-44; Gal. 1:15; Rom. 9:11). The Bible teaches that “Children are a heritage from the Lord” (Psa. 127:3).
One key and irrefutable example that Scripture considered what’s in the womb to be just as much of a person as what’s outside the womb comes from Luke’s gospel. The physician (Col. 4:14) writes, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Luke 1:41) “For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy.“ (Luke 1:44) The writer uses the Greek term breafos (βρέφος) that’s translated “baby” in our English versions. What’s interesting about the text is that what is in the womb is assumed to be a baby. Later in chapter two Luke writes, ““This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:12) … So they came in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger. ” (Luke 2:16) Guess what Greek word is used? βρέφος. The writer’s of Scripture were clear that what was in the womb is a person.
You may disagree with the Bible and not believe a word of it, but you have no right to alter or misrepresent what it teaches. If
pro-abortion folks want to defend their position, they need to avoid making
poor claims about what the opposing view believes. And mam, I don’t read the
King James Version. I read the Greek text. Your opinion ultimately lacks theological and rigorious philosophical defence. It’s yours but there’s good reason why I cannot commit to such a position. “A baby isn’t a baby until birth.” The only thing that’s changed is its location if your “opinion” was true. Do we really want to begin defining personhood by location?
“We can get there with good schools for all students, not just those
lucky enough or connected enough to land a spot at the few
high-performing institutions in the city. New Orleanians need jobs that
pay living wages, ones that offer retirement benefits and medical
coverage too. New Orleanians need affordable housing and safe
communities free from fear of police harassment.”
There is so much garden-variety, progressive arguing 101, social marxism language in this editorial it’s tough to even keep track.
Do you realize you’re just asking for these things? How do you think they occur? The government cannot spend on things without first obtaining the tax revenue from the productive class of the region.
That productive class is shrinking. The recipient class is growing. It’s undeniable. So you’re asking for these things (affordable housing, living wages, good schools….) to just “be there”, but you have to understand economic theory of how these initiatives would come about. What is the return on just spending other people’s money to provide these? What if these government initiatives actually raise the cost of goods and services for impoverished people? (and they would).
To redistribute at the level you are asking is the very definition of social marxism. And that cycle will never stop.
You’re entire discussion of progressive pablum never addresses the individual. Nothing about responsibility for ones self/family, nothing about self-reliance, nothing about consequences for actions, nothing about the discipline of failure…
Just collective, collective, collective.
Seeing this collectivism push more and more out there. Melissa Harris Perry’s discussion that “we need to break this private notion that your kids are yours… that they are actually all of ours, the communities children” is a classic example.
Absolutely spot on. I couldn’t agree more with every economic/ethical point in this post. Well said.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply Ayn Rand.
I’ll assume based on the snarky response you have a progressive viewpoint in opposition.
Lose the snark… break the argument.
Yes, because progressives monopolize the snark! Isn’t that Sarah Palin just the sweetest thing?!
Break the argument.
No, that’s not how this works. You don’t paint a group with a broad brush, hypocritically engage in the snark yourself, and then jump on your high horse.
The church groups care nothing after the birth, which is why we have the violence. Why not use billboard money for food banks, health screenings or some other worthwhile endeavor?
Yep, fostering dependency, that’s the ticket.
Yes, helping out people turns them into good for nothing dependents. I really hope they get rid of social security soon. My grandmom just sits around all day. Get a job!
There is a difference between dependency on means-tested welfare vs. social security (which is your own money accumulated over time).
Just making sure I follow you here… Church groups are responsible for violence?
Not the person committing the act, not the parents raising the children…
So you’re saying to reduce violence, it’s incumbent on local churches to proactively and directly contribute the food and health needs of the community from the treasury of the church donations?
Just want to be sure this is what you’re proposing. Interesting.
**Side note… Catholic Charities was the 3rd largest charity in the country according to Forbes in 2012. So you’re patently wrong.
G in Uptown, I am not sure if you are willfully ignorant or just the victim of a poor educational system. Saying that money would be better spent on social programs does not mean that whatever idiot wasted their money on this offensive billboard is responsible for the crime. Either educate yourself or go back to commenting on Nola.com.
Hi again!
I deal in rational thought.
The sentence was “The church groups care nothing after the birth, which is why we have the violence.”
This sentence uses subjects and objects. By reading these, the author is saying that churches don’t care for non-newborns and that’s why violence occurs.
I’ve never commented on Nola.com. But if a debate in rational thought using economic principles is your interest, I’m happy to oblige!
Legal murder vs illegal murder. Maybe some of us patriarch types do understand.
Amen!
Exactly Jewel, very well said, thank you for writing this piece!
I find the billboards gross, but mostly because billboards are gross. For a while the billboard on top the Loews theater had a huge picture of rotten teeth as part of an anti-smoking campaign. I wanted to go light up in protest. The city has to redouble its efforts to eliminate billboards. Anti-abortion and anti-smoking messages are legitimate political speech, but we need not accept every gross display.
if abortion is killing, this does not value life. combine this with teaching the ones who werent aborted that they evolved from primordial slime by random chance really sets up a happy society. on another note, if the bible is true, one way to end blessings is to shed innocent blood such as abortion by the millions, you do not want to end the Creator’s blessings, probably too late now for that, enjoy the cursings…
Here’s another shining example of a liberal who disagrees with someone’s first amendment rights when they voice an opinion contrary to theirs.
Isn’t this the same writer who published an opinion not long ago advocating more real ‘activists?’ I suppose she meant all ‘activists’ other than pro-lifers. I’m not even pro-life but I find the writer’s thought process here to be ridiculous.
I didn’t like the column, but I don’t see any attack on the First Amendment. I think she was complaining about the substance of the message.
She equates the exercise of free speech to an act of violence. If that isn’t an attack on the First Amendment, nothing is.
Thanks for voicing this opinion. The attack on Black women who are exercising a right to a legal medical procedure is bigoted and disrespectful. None of us can know the reasons – personal or medical – that a women chooses to terminate a pregnancy. So we have got to trust women to make the decisions that are right for them and their families.
Nothing more disrespectful than stripping the human rights of the unborn. The right to life is a civil rights issue. It is defensible by appeal to human reason alone and is in no sense a religious dogma — a term I seriously doubt Jewel Bush can define or explain.
Well said. Thank you, Jewel, for having the courage and the heart to speak out about this gross distortion of facts.
Yes! Here is the link to the Facebook event for our Rally for Women’s Health in New Orleans. https://www.facebook.com/events/647287111954293/?ref=ts&fref=ts
AMEN!! Please list any groups that are protesting this group. The billboard, and this stupid commercial i just saw, was the last straw for me.
Classic progressivism. Shut down voices. “Tolerance” only for positions you agree with. “Out” any groups in opposition (kind of like what the IRS has been engaging in?)
Totally agree. Why is it that these darn progressives don’t want to
hear other opinions!??!!1 How come they are not like the good ol’
conservatives, who welcome the other side of the story? There is a
reason we are exposed to liberal opinions on Fox News!
That’s a remarkably ignorant observation considering what the conservatives have been up to lately. Boycotting JC Penney. Boycotting Starbucks. They’ve even got a website called boycottliberalism. And you have the chutzpah to claim that progressives only tolerate positions they agree with. Pot, meet dah kettle. It’s noteworthy that in at least 2-3 instances on this one thread you have been treating “progressive” as some sort of epithet. Sounds like you aren’t very tolerant of the other side. Find a mirror, my friend.
Hey Donny, we started a Facebook group called NOLA Needs Women’s Health. We are organizing a counter-rally on May 20 and should have other stuff going on soon. Please like us for more info! https://www.facebook.com/NolaNeedsWomensHealth
Ms Bush, I have never enjoyed anything you have ever written on Uptown Messenger. This was the last one I will ever read. Please just go away so there is more room for interesting stories.
I stand with Planned Parenthood.
The QUESTION that really needs to be asked is not
“What’s in a woman’s body?
It’s
“HOW DID IT GOT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Some thoughts on the argument that a woman has the right to do with her body as she pleases within the issue of abortion:
1) It should be noted that a person’s right over his or her own body is not absolute. Examples where the government and other entities step in are prostitution, illegal drug abuse, the desire to have sex with a child, ect.
2) The fetus is technically not part of the woman’s body (I‘m calling it a fetus and using the pronoun it for the sake of argument. It‘s a baby). It is a genetically distinct entity with its own genetic code, and early on in the pregnancy it has its own heart and circulatory system. To say it’s part of the woman’s body so she can do whatever she pleases with it confuses the fetus being attached to the woman carrying it and being a part of the woman carrying it. It does not follow that just because the fetus is attached to its mother by an umbilical cord that the fetus is a part of her in a way that denies its own separate identity. Furthermore, one might argue that the fetus could never survive on its own without the mother’s body. So what? We do not decide whether someone is a person based upon their ability to survive on their own. Someone who is in a vegetative state cannot survive on their own without human care and sometimes the use of machines. Are we to conclude that they’re not persons? Another pertinent example would be twins who are bodily conjoined. Occasionally, A conjoined twin couldn’t survive on its own if they were to be detached from each other but no one thinks we should let one half of the twins decide the fate of the other.
3) The argument that a woman has the right to do with her body whatever she so desires precludes the idea that the fetus is a person. If it’s a person, the whole right to do whatever she desires topples to another person’s right to life. Only if personhood is rejected can the right to do whatever with her body stand under scrutiny. One person’s rights end where another’s begins. Furthermore, if the issue is really about the limitation of one’s ultimate freedom and it can be shown that what is inside the womb is a person or even probably a person, than by all means, extend the same exercise of freedom to him or her!
4) The argument negates any fatherly wants or wishes. The father apparently has no say so as long as the “piece of flesh” is in the womb yet is fully responsible for supplying child support for the fetus after it is born. Until women can have children without the sperm from a man, it seems like the man should have some rights within this decision.
Even if it is vague to some people whether or not the fetus is a person or at what moment the fetus receives personhood, the ambiguity in no way should lead to the act of abortion. If there is a chance that there is personhood and humanity values life (all do or at least should), then the conservative choice of carrying the child is the most logical and moral. Ronald Reagan once said in a news conference that “If we don’t know, then shouldn’t we morally opt on the side of life? If you came upon an immobile body and you yourself could not determine whether it was dead or alive, I think that you would decide to consider it alive until somebody could prove it was dead. You wouldn’t get a shovel and start covering it up. And I think we should do the same thing with regard to abortion.” The ambiguity of murder being wrong is far less than the ambiguity of whether or not the fetus is a person. It makes the most sense to do the moral thing if there’s a chance one is committing murder. And, to be quite frank, the law unfortunately does not determine what is moral or immoral. The fact that our current justice system says it’s not immoral has no bearing and shows that whole systems can be flawed.
In the end, this article completey sidesteps the real issue- what is it that is in the womb. Reason, religion, and rigorous empirical evidence are increasingly showing that it is a human being, a part of our race. The writer needs to spend less time writing and more time reading a logic textbook.
Very well written.
I’d also like to point out the absolute absurdity of this line-” It is nothing short of a thinly-veiled shame campaign on the poor and the women of color who use Planned Parenthood’s services.”
Beloved, it is the poor and the women of color who are targeted by Planned Parenthood. Part of the solution does include education-just give those children a chance to learn. The logic behind it is what sleeping rocks dream of.
African Americans make up 12.6% of U.S. Population, but account for 30% of all abortions
In Louisiana, 1 in 7 minority pregnancies end in abortion. Nationally, 1 in 2.7 black pregnancies end in abortion.
Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood, Advocated Eugenics: Sanger, a strong advocate for eugenics,advocated the “weeding out” of “genetically unfit” populations.
79% of PP Abortion Facilities Located Near Minority Neighborhoods: The 2010 Census reveals that PP has located 79% of its 165 abortion facilities within walking distance of African American or Hispanic/Latino neighborhood.
Absolutely correct. There is a distinct reason for the Claiborne location that’s being built.
I am fine with the billboard .So what if it says not more abortions. Anyone who tries to stop people trying to save any life: is guilty of supporting death.
“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
You do not have to be religious to be against abortion. This article spews hatred and ignorance of those fighting for the lives of the most innocent. Maybe just maybe the lack of respect for the lives of the unborn mirrors the attitude of those that commit mass shootings. Our society needs to wake up and rethink things.
I’ve been looking at some of these comments and I have come to the conclusion that the abortion issue is purely political to pro choicers. They seem to me to have a very inmature attitude that this is a game that they want to win. This is NOT a game. This is about the lives of innocent people. The fact that some babies come out alive after failed abortions proves that they were also alive in uterus and all the way out. This attitude that they are not alive is just like gaging and covoring somebody and then justifying killing them because you cant see or hear them. Discusting.
The title of this article is discusting too. Its also a unfair accusation. She seems to think that pro lifers are judgemental. Who does she think we are judging? Well how dare we call abortionists out for who they truely are! Oh how dare we judge those baby killers! How judgemental of us!
sheesh Becky, lay off.
We totally agree with Ms. Bush. Please like our page NOLA Needs Women’s Health on Facebook! We are organizing a counter-rally on May 20 to support women’s health and are sharing facts about Planned Parenthood on our page. https://www.facebook.com/NolaNeedsWomensHealth
The Leftists have spun this topic into an issue of a womans choice. Its nobodies choice to kill an unborn child other than the mother, she has a right to kill her child. There is something incredibly wrong when the ones protecting the unborn are seen as the bad guys and the women murdering their own child are seen as simply exercising their “right”.