"Now that I look at him, I wouldn't care if the counselors were white, Asian, black -- they saved his life," Yarbrough said. "But when I first started out ... I wouldn't have been as comfortable with a white person as I was with Jettie. She looks like me. She knows what I'm going through."
Located in a grand, old mansion -- the bathrooms are marble, the chandeliers ornate -- the Family Care facility is supported by nearby Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Church. The congregation spends about $350,000 a year on the effort, as part of a $1.8-million initiative to offer area residents adult literacy, sports programs, computer training, family counseling and other services.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday March 25, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 57 words Type of Material: Correction
Antiabortion efforts: An article in Wednesday's Section A about antiabortion efforts in black communities oversimplified the eugenics views of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger in saying she did not support coerced birth control. Sanger did not support measures to limit the population of minorities through coerced contraception. She did, however, support forced sterilization of the mentally disabled.
Oak Cliff's pastor, the Rev. Tony Evans, calls this his "whole life" approach. He's preaching more and more against abortion; in a recent series of sermons on the Ten Commandments, he devoted most of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" to the topic. But he also takes the pulpit to talk about civil rights, poverty and affordable housing.
Evans has staged national conferences to persuade other black preachers that they can press hard to save life in the womb without giving up on the traditional (often liberal) concerns of the black church.
It's an uphill struggle. Not only are black pastors often afraid to offend their mostly female congregations, but many have developed close partnerships with abortion-rights supporters.
The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice has spent a decade helping black preachers teach both teens and parents about sexuality and birth control.
Planned Parenthood uses the Washington, D.C., affiliate as its template. Executives there visit black churches on Sundays -- and even speak from the pulpits on topics such as HIV testing. President and CEO Jatrice Martel Gaiter holds regular clinic tours for black ministers, "to show them that their kids will be safe with us."
Gaiter encourages the perception that the antiabortion movement is made up of imperious outsiders. As she puts it: "Upper-middle-class white organizations should not be able to interfere with families in black communities."
Antiabortion activists are fighting back with their own appeals to black pride. In particular, they target Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a racist intent on eliminating people of color. One popular flier -- recently mailed to 10,000 homes in minority neighborhoods in Waco, Texas -- declares, "Lynching is for amateurs" and compares "Klan Parenthood" clinics to Nazi death camps.
