Alveda King: ‘The Most Dangerous Place For An African-American Is In The Womb!’

Pro-life activist Alveda King reacted to the removal on Friday of a billboard advertisement in Manhattan that featured a black girl and the statement “the most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.”

“It is an outrageous act of censorship that this billboard was taken down,” King said. “This billboard should be posted in every city of the country.

The billboard message’s placement comes in the wake of a report released last month by the New York City Department of Health that revealed an abortion rate of 41 percent of all pregnancies in the city in 2009 -- with 59.8 percent of those to African-American women.

“The message of this billboard is totally accurate,” King said in a statement issued by Priests for Life where she is the director of African-American Outreach. “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb!”

She added: “And it should provoke outrage in the African-American community—not because it is racist, but because of the truth it reveals; the truth that is being kept from the African-American community.”

The billboard message was a project of thatsabortion.com, which paid for the message as part of its LifeAlways project.

A spokesman for Louisiana-based Lamar Advertising, Hal Kilshaw, said that while the company respects the right to freedom of expression, the decision to take down the billboard Thursday night was for "public safety." He said waiters and waitresses at a restaurant in the building where the billboard was placed had been harassed.

The Rev. Al Sharpton praised the decision and canceled plans to protest the billboard Friday.

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