Press Release California
Update
NARAL Pro-Choice America Statement of Solidarity
NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue said:
“NARAL Pro-Choice America staff, board and members understand the death of George Floyd and the events of the last week are just a snapshot of the violence and racism Black people in America face every day due to entrenched white supremacy. Further, we understand that we are a part of a system of structural racism unless we are every single day working to unlearn it and fight against it. Silence is not an option.
We witness and actively work against reproductive oppression when we tackle disparities in abortion care, birth control access, maternal mortality and systems that support parents to raise healthy children. Those same systems of disparity exist in criminal justice, in education, and simply in walking around every single day as a Black person in this country. Many of us who are not Black will never know what that feels like, but we don’t need to intimately experience pain and trauma to know it is evil and wrong and to fight against it.
NARAL Pro-Choice America is an organization dedicated to reproductive freedom for all people. However, there can be no reproductive freedom without fundamental freedom from tyranny and oppression.
We recognize that as a historically white organization, with Black team members and Board members, our responsibility is in both internal steps and external steps, and while we listen and hear and follow Black leaders, we must act and exercise our privilege to lift up those voices and demand more.
NARAL Pro-Choice America stands in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives, with Black leaders in the Reproductive Justice community and with the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and every other person who has lost their lives to racial violence. We commit to work to dismantle a culture of white supremacy, eradicate racial disparities and affirm the inherent dignity of every human being.”
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NARAL Pro-Choice America and its network of state affiliates and chapters are dedicated to protecting and expanding reproductive freedom for all. For more than 50 years, NARAL has worked to guarantee that every woman has the right to make personal decisions regarding the full range of reproductive choices, including preventing unintended pregnancy, bearing healthy children, and choosing legal abortion. Since 1969, NARAL has made history, grown to over 2.5 million members, and met the moments that have defined this fight with action, power and freedom. In recognition of its work defending our constitutional right to choose, Fortune Magazine described NARAL as “one of the top 10 advocacy groups in America.”