From The Rev. Dr. Carlton W. Veazey, President and CEO, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice:

As a black man born in the South in the 1930s, I vividly remember the devastation caused by illegal abortion, the hardships and indignities suffered by black women and poor women faced with an unwanted pregnancy and the tragedies of infertility and death due to illegal procedures.

The powerful five part series on Laura Flanders show on GriTtv called "Conspiracy Tactics" recalls the injustices of those times -- the harassment and the restrictions that overwhelmingly hurt black women and poor women -- and alerts us to the religious-right campaign that is trying once again to deny women their reproductive rights.

As I explain in one of the episodes, the challenge for the black church is clear. This campaign is an attack on our community's freedom to make private decisions about women's health and family well-being. The black church has the moral authority to confront the outrageous lies about abortion perpetrated by this campaign and to bear witness to the fact that, for women, freedom must include reproductive options. It is my hope that this series will be instrumental in activating African-American clergy to overcome this threat to our freedom.

What we face, as the important series documents, is a nationwide campaign led by the Right to Life organization aimed at African American communities. The ostensible goal is to dissuade women from having an abortion but the actual purpose is to use the abortion issue as a wedge to gain political support and ultimately to overturn Roe v. Wade and end legal abortion.

Full story.