Fox News’ Alveda King: ‘You Can’t Be Racist’ If You’re ‘Pro-Life’

During a Wednesday-morning segment on Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor Alveda King mischaracterized a comment by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) so she could accuse the Democratic presidential hopeful of calling anti-abortion activists “racist.”

King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., claimed that “if you are pro-life you can’t be racist” because “you are defending life” for a “defenseless population,” presumably without regard to skin color.

She added, “So to call us racist because I’m pro-life, I guess she is calling me racist as well.”

What Gillibrand actually said is that she would not want to appoint a judge who is anti-abortion because she views the anti-abortion movement as aiming to take away a woman’s civil right to “reproductive freedom.” Just as there is no “moral equivalency” when discussing racism, so too does Gillibrand not see a moral equivalency between the pro- and anti-abortion positions because the latter seeks to remove a citizen’s civil rights just as surely as racists do. This is in no way the same as saying that anti-abortion advocates are also racists.

King, however, does not view reproductive freedom as a civil right. She calls abortion “a civil wrong” and rejects the idea that a fetus is part of a woman’s body. She also claims that science agrees with her postion, which it very much does not.

King also proclaimed herself the real champion of civil rights because as an anti-abortion activist, she is “fighting for human life from the womb to the tomb.” Which would seem to conflict with conservative orthodoxy on issues such as providing access to healthcare to everyone, without which they are deprived of this civil right. Not that one expects such introspection from a news segment on Fox.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.