Life Always launched an anti-abortion campaign that included 30 tasteless billboards located throughout Chicago’s predominantly black neighborhoods.
The ad contains an enormous illustration of President Barack Obama and ominously warns passersby that abortion could erase a future leader.
The billboard reads: “Every 21 minutes our next possible leader is aborted.”
Rev. Derek A. McCoy of Life Always said at the unveiling, “There are many crisis pregnancy centers that are labeled throughout this community that are viable options.”
Life Always isn’t a stranger to controversy, the group struck a nerve in New York with their equally offensive billboard campaign, “Dangerous Place.”
In that ad, launched during Black History Month, a young African American female stares straight ahead as these words hover above her head: “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.”
The larger-than-life billboard was erected in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, near a Planned Parenthood.
“During Black History Month, we celebrate our history, but our future is in jeopardy as a genocidal plot is carried out through abortion,” said Life Always board member Rev. Stephen Broden.
Comparing abortion to genocide ruffled feathers. “Every woman has the right to make personal choices in regard to her body…but to compare abortion to terrorism and genocide is highly offensive,” shot back Brooklyn, N.Y., politician Letitia James of the Working Families Party.
The billboard company stepped in and removed the Dangerous Place advertisement.
Community leaders in Chicago can expect a similar victory as Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are now in Chicago full time, and it’s highly unlikely that the billboards with Obama’s image will remain intact. (Especially since Obama is throwing a fundraiser this week).
Life Always describes itself as a nonprofit organization that aims to raise public awareness of Life issues through advertising. In a released statement, the group said that it “launched a national campaign to expose the truth about how Planned Parenthood targets minority neighborhoods as they perform over 300,000 abortions a year.”
According to statistics, African Americans make up about 13 percent of the American population, and account for 36.4 percent of abortions.
