Because of the disproportionate number of Blacks who have been aborted, it’s difficult not to make the connection between King’s dream and the nightmare of abortion, and ask, Have not the last 40 years of Roe significantly undermined the cause that King so tirelessly gave himself to until 1968?

Black genocide.

That’s Clenard Childress’s term for abortion in America and its pervasive effects in the last generation, especially in the Black community. The statistics are outrageous. One in four African Americans conceived in the last forty years have been cut down by the “black genocide” of legal abortion.

A decade ago Childress founded a website by and for African Americans (blackgenocide.org) “to expose the disproportionate amount of Black babies destroyed by the abortion industry. For every two African American women that get pregnant, one will choose to abort.”

The site laments that “a Black baby is 5 times more likely to be killed in the womb than a White Baby.” Childress says, “The most dangerous place for an African American to be is in the womb of their African American mother.”

For Childress and a growing number, the point is clear: Abortion in America is a race issue.

King Today, Roe Tomorrow

It’s not unfitting to highlight such an atrocity on the day the United States remembers the man who gave his life for the African American right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thirty years ago, in 1983, president Ronald Reagan signed into law the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. on the third Monday of January. January 21 is the latest the day falls — as it does this year — which puts the day back to back with the January 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

King was assassinated in 1968. It was only five years later, in 1973 — forty years ago this week — that the Roe case made abortion legal in the United States. And as Childress and others have sought to highlight, abortion has not been an equal opportunity killer in the last generation.

Again, roughly one in four African Americans, who otherwise might be alive today, have been consumed in the holocaust of legal abortion. Because of the disproportionate number of Blacks who have been aborted, it’s difficult not to make the connection between King’s dream and the nightmare of abortion, and ask, Have not the last 40 years of Roe significantly undermined the cause that King so tirelessly gave himself to until 1968?

And is it not a terrible irony and tragedy that in the very pinnacle of realizing King’s dream — Obama being the first Black president — we have an administration actively perpetuating the industry that has claimed the lives of one in four African Americans since King? As one Black man says in the 3801 Lancaster documentary, “Everything that was ever gained during the Civil Rights Movement is worth nothing to a dead Black child,” and as one Black woman proclaims, “Make no mistake, abortion is a civil rights issue.”

Linking Lynching and Abortion

In January of 2007, John Piper sought to make the point in a sermon. Here’s Piper’s full disclosure from the beginning of that message, entitled “When Is Abortion Racism?”:

Let me tell you one of my main aims in this message: In the name of Jesus Christ and rooted in the gospel of his death and resurrection for sinners (including abortionists and pastors), my aim is to stigmatize abortion by associating it with racism. I would like you to link abortion and race the same way you link lynching and race. . . .

Racism might — and often did — result in the killing of innocent humans; in our history, it often did. But abortion always results in the killing of innocent humans. Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Black people were lynched in America. Today more Black babies are killed by white abortionists every three days than all who were lynched in those years.

King’s Dream to End Abortion

But it’s not just Childress and Piper making the connection between King’s dream and the nightmare of abortion. King’s own niece, Dr. Alveda C. King, has captured the irony — and tragedy — as articulately as anyone. She loves the dream her uncle had, and has her own as well.

We have been fueled by the fire of “women’s rights,” so long that we have become deaf to the outcry of the real victims whose rights are being trampled upon, the babies and the mothers. . . .

What about the rights of each baby who is artificially breached before coming to term in his or her mother’s womb, only to have her skull punctured, and feel, yes agonizingly “feel” the life run out of her before she takes her first breath of freedom. What about the rights of these women who have been called to pioneer the new frontiers of the new millennium only to have their lives snuffed out before the calendar even turns?

Oh, God, what would Martin Luther King, Jr., who dreamed of having his children judged by the content of their characters do if he’d lived to see the contents of thousands of children’s skulls emptied into the bottomless caverns of the abortionists pits?

It is time for America, perhaps the most blessed nation on earth to lead the world in repentance, and in restoration of life! . . . Abortion is at the forefront of our destruction.

How Can the Dream Survive?

King continues,

[Martin Luther] King [Jr.] once said, “The Negro cannot win as long as he is willing to sacrifice the lives of his children for comfort and safety.” How can the “Dream” survive if we murder the children? Every aborted baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. . . . If the Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to live, our babies must live. Our mothers must choose life. If we refuse to answer the cry of mercy from the unborn, and ignore the suffering of the mothers, then we are signing our own death warrants.

I too, like Martin Luther King, Jr., have a dream. I have a dream that the men and women, the boys and girls of America will come to our senses, and humble ourselves before God Almighty and pray for mercy, and receive His healing grace. I pray that this is the day, the hour of our deliverance. May God have mercy on us all.

A Prayer for Life Among the Minorities

Piper closes his sermon with this final plea, and then (in italics below) this final prayer. Please join with us in this prayer this week as King’s day and the 40th anniversary of Roe happen back to back.

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. They were founded by Margaret Sanger whose “Negro Project” in the 1930s was designed to reduce the births of black children . . . . Today 78% of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority communities. . . . Every day 1,300 black babies are killed in America. Seven hundred Hispanic babies die every day from abortion.

Call this what you will — when the slaughter has an ethnic face and the percentages are double that of the white community and the killers are almost all white, something is going on here that ought to make the lovers of racial equality and racial harmony wake up. . . .

O that the murderous effect of abortion in the Black and Latino communities, destroying tens of thousands at the hands of white abortionists, would explode with the same reprehensible reputation as lynching. May the Lord raise up from the African-American churches and the Hispanic-American churches a passion to seize the moral high ground against the slaughter of the little ones. Such leadership would sweep the field, and the white pro-choice establishment would fall before it. May it happen in the name of Christ and for his glory and for the good of all people until the Lord of glory comes. Amen.

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for John Piper and Desiring God, and elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church in the Twin Cities. He and his wife Megan have twin sons (Carson and Coleman) and live in Minneapolis. This article is used with permission.