ICYMI: Planned Parenthood “Created To Destroy The Entire Black Race” Says Leading Republican Gubernatorial Candidate In North Carolina

Dan Forest Showcases His Extremist Viewpoints Four Years After North Carolina Voters Rejected Radical Right-Wing Politics

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, North Carolina gubernatorial candidate, reiterated the debunked claim that Planned Parenthood was “created to destroy the entire black race.” The local NAACP strongly condemned his remarks saying “I’m not sure why the Lt. Governor feels he’s authorized to speak on behalf of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or on what African-American people see. His opposition to organizations like Planned Parenthood show he has not learned much from Dr. King.”
In response to the criticism, Forest doubled down on his remarks on Twitter saying “the facts speak for themselves,” despite fact checks stating the exact opposite.  
“Dan Forest’s extreme comments are completely out of touch with both the facts and North Carolina voters,” said DGA National Press Secretary Jerusalem Demsas. “Four years ago, North Carolina voters firmly rejected right-wing extremism and elected a moderate, bipartisan leader in Governor Roy Cooper. Forest seems to have learned nothing in that time.”
Forest’s views have been consistently extreme and out of touch and they showcase how he would govern North Carolina. His poor judgment has cost the state before when he cheered the job-killing and discriminatory HB2, which caused North Carolina to lose $3.76 billion in economic activity.
See more from HuffPost, WRAL, and Slate below:
WRAL: Lt. Gov. Forest repeats false claim Planned Parenthood created ‘to destroy the entire black race’
RALEIGH, N.C. — Lt. Gov. Dan Forest took aim at Planned Parenthood during a speech to a church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Forest, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, has made no secret of his Christian beliefs over the years, including his opposition to abortion.
Speaking to a group of black ministers in Fayetteville on Monday, he said he was glad the holiday honoring the civil rights leader combined issues of justice with life.
“There’s no doubt that, when Planned Parenthood was created, it was created to destroy the entire black race,” he said. “That was the purpose of Planned Parenthood. That’s just the truth. That’s not just some bloc on the side. That was the purpose when that organization was created.
[…]
A spokesman for Upper Room Church of God in Christ, where Forest spoke, supports his statements. But a local chapter of the NAACP doesn’t.
“I’m not sure why the Lt. Governor feels he’s authorized to speak on behalf of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or on what African-American people see,” Gerald Givens, president of the Raleigh-Apex NAACP, said in an email. “His opposition to organizations like Planned Parenthood show he has not learned much from Dr. King. However, Dr. King probably would agree we have unfinished business in education, economics, health care and voting rights in North Carolina. We’re glad the Lt. Governor agrees.”
[…]
PolitiFact has addressed Sanger’s history on several occasions:

• In 2011, presidential candidate Herman Cain said Planned Parenthood’s early objective was to “help kill black babies before they came into the world.” (Pants on Fire)
• In February 2015, a former New Hampshire politician said Sanger was “an active participant in the Ku Klux Klan.” (False)
• In September 2015, presidential candidate Ben Carson said Sanger “believed that people like me should be eliminated.” (False)
• Critics often point to one particular quote of Sanger’s to support their argument. In a letter, Sanger once said, “We don’t want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs.”

Slate: North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Had Some MLK Day Thoughts on Race and Abortion
Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is a natural occasion for politicians to talk about America’s unfinished business. On Monday, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, delivered his own remarks on the theme at a holiday breakfast at the Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, North Carolina—using his 10-minute speech to offer his esoteric theories about how the country needs to reckon with the genetic unreality of race and the allegedly genocidal aims of abortion rights in audio obtained by Slate.
He began by telling the audience of church leaders that his teenage daughter is working on a biology product focusing on genetics. “She’s doing this genetic study trying to figure out dominant genes versus recessive genes and how they played out in the family,” said Forest, who is white. “It got me thinking: When we think about things like skin color, what we’re talking about is dominant and recessive genes. That’s what got this battle over civil rights, this fight that Martin Luther King was fighting was ultimately about.”
Forest asked, jokingly, if the approximately 50 attendees could imagine attending church based on whether or not they had attached or detached earlobes. “That’s how this thing about human dignity goes astray and how we put things into the wrong context at times,” he said.
He went on:
“It’s important to remember that God did not create a black man and a white man and a brown man. He created Adam and Eve. He created a genetic code within Adam and Eve that gave the possibility for all the colors that we have now within humanity. That’s what He created. I believe that within Adam and Eve’s family, you saw white children and black children and brown children and everything in between. And you probably saw blond hair and black hair and red hair and green eyes and brown eyes and blue eyes and hazel eyes. You saw all that because God [and His] infinite creativity and wisdom.
Yet at the same time there are people who want to destroy that tapestry and they partition people into political identity groups and say: ‘You’re over here because your skin color is brown and you’re over here cause your skin color is’ — what are we? What do you call our skin color anyway? We’re not white.”
“None of us are truly white. None of us are truly black,” he continued, while people in the room laughed. “We have a great variety even in this audience.”
This section of the speech was conceptually stunning, like John Roberts’s colorblind jurisprudence raised to the level of scripture: digging into the physical fictitiousness of race to deny the social reality of it. The use of race and racism as a means of division becomes identified with “political identity groups.” All this in a state where Republicans have fought to hang onto an explicitly race-driven set of political gerrymanders.
A few minutes later, Forest steered his remarks into a common, somewhat ahistorical, right-wing anti-abortion message.
[…]
Forest’s office and and campaign have not returned a request for comment.
HuffPost: GOP Governor Candidate: Planned Parenthood Aims To ‘Destroy The Entire Black Race’
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (R), who’s running for governor in this year’s elections, used an event honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday to accuse Planned Parenthood of committing Black genocide through its abortion services.
“There is no doubt that when Planned Parenthood was created, it was created to destroy the entire Black race,” he said to members of the Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, North Carolina. “That was the purpose of Planned Parenthood. And that’s just the truth.”
Conservative Christians for decades have argued that Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights organizations use abortion to eradicate the Black race, claiming that racism within the medical community has led to more Black women than white women being coerced into ending pregnancies.