Maafa 21

The title comes from the Swahili term "maafa," which means tragedy or disaster and is used to describe the centuries of global oppression of African people during slavery, apartheid and colonial rule, while the number "21" refers to an alleged maafa in the 21st century (though beginning in the 19th), which the film says is the disproportionately high rate of abortion among African Americans.[10][11] According to the film, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a racist who wanted to wipe out, or at least greatly diminish, the black race, and set in place a program to make this happen; a program which is being continued in the 21st century by Planned Parenthood. The film implies that African American women were forced by Sanger and the eugenicists to have abortions.[1][5] Frank N. Carlson says that the film presents a continual stream of assertions which viewers find difficult to comprehend in total.[5][6] A photo of Adolf Hitler appears in the film, presented as one of Sanger's "natural allies",[4] and aborted babies are compared to Holocaust victims.[12] The film states that abortion has reduced the black population in the United States by 25 percent. It discusses some of Planned Parenthood's origins (formerly the American Birth Control League), attributing to it a "150-year-old goal of exterminating the black population." The film features conservative African Americans, including politician Stephen Broden, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s niece Alveda King, who claims that Sanger targeted black people.[3][6][13]

The film was released on June 15, 2009, and the premiere screening was held on June 18, 2009, on the eve of Juneteenth, at the United States Capitol Visitor Center.

Anti-abortion reviewers have generally embraced the film, while other reviewers have often criticized its attribution of racist views to family planning activists and its claims that attempt to link family planning to genocide.

Pro-life activists in Knoxville, Tennessee have praised the film as a "valuable tool for discourse" against abortion.[5] MovieGuide, an online database of movie reviews that uses a "Biblical perspective" in reviewing films for families, gave Maafa 21 a "quality rating" of "excellent" (4 out of 4 stars), describing it as a "very carefully reasoned, well-produced exposé of the abortion industry, racism and eugenics" and says that it "proves through innumerable sources that the founders of Planned Parenthood and other parts of the abortion movement were interested in killing off the black race in America and elsewhere."[14] Religious online news source Catholic.net also found Maafa 21 convincing, saying it "shows the connection from slavery and eugenics to birth control, abortion and black genocide today."[15]

Loretta J. Ross, author of "African-American Women and Abortion: A Neglected History"[16] and founder of several human rights and reproductive justice organizations, wrote that Maafa 21 is a "pseudo-documentary" by white anti-abortion activists, and that, rather than being racial suicide, family planning formed part of a "racial uplift strategy" supported by African-American leaders and black women, as they believed that in smaller families, each child could have a better opportunity.[9]

Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, wrote that the film is a "shockumentary" used to support the activities of the black pro-life movement.[17]

The Liberator Magazine, an independent magazine about African diasporic culture, gave the film a mixed review. The reviewer said that the film "does a good job of placing the Eugenics movement into a larger historical context" but that "one gets the impression that the point [of the film] isn't so much about saving black people, but furthering a political agenda" against abortion, using emotional manipulation to do so.[18] A similar response came from Harold Middlebrook, pastor at Canaan Baptist Church of East Knoxville and "a widely respected civil-rights leader." While rejecting the idea that Maafa 21 will have a lasting impact on African American culture, largely due to his apprehensions of the sincerity of the film's producers, Middlebrook said that he "believes the theory that Planned Parenthood may be attempting to limit black births to increase white dominance."[5]

The film presents a continual stream of assertions which viewers find difficult to comprehend in total.[5][6] Instead, viewers are left with several impressions: that Sanger was racist, that she wanted to wipe out the black race, and that she set in place a program to make this happen; a program which is being continued in the 21st century by Planned Parenthood. The film implies that African American women were forced by Sanger and the eugenicists to have abortions.[1][5] A photo of Adolf Hitler appears in the film, presented as one of Sanger's "natural allies",[4] and aborted babies are compared to victims of the Holocaust.[12]

Critics of the film have countered many points made in it. They describe how Sanger was not racist and was instead much more sympathetic than many of her peers to the plight of the black race. They say that there were racist people on both sides of the eugenics debate in the early 20th century.[4] They show that the eugenics movement in the US was little concerned with African Americans, having a much greater interest in limiting Hispanics and Asians. They describe how Sanger wanted birth control, abortion and sterilization to be made available to anybody who wished to have it, without regard to race. Critics show how African Americans, especially women, were largely in favor of birth control being made more available to them, and that black women had been inducing their own abortions from the earliest days of American slavery. Conservative pro-life activist Alveda King appears in the film; Loretta J. Ross writes that the presence of King is a co-opting of the legacy of her liberal uncle, the famous civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.,[9] who was very much in favor of birth control made more available to blacks.[8]

It is certainly true that a higher percentage of African American women have abortions–about 40% of the pregnancies of black women end as induced abortion.[8] Using data from 2009, black women had 477 abortions for every 1,000 live births, while Hispanics had 195 abortions per 1,000 live births, and whites had 140 abortions per 1,000 live births.[6] Critics have said that this much higher rate of abortion among African Americans comes directly from a correspondingly high rate of unplanned pregnancies, which is in turn caused by very poor access to birth control among blacks.[6] The film asserts that Planned Parenthood targets black neighborhoods, but Planned Parenthood has said that only 5.8% of its clinics are in communities that have a majority of African American residents.[5][9][16]

Esther Katz, editor and director of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project (MSPP) at New York University, said that quotes and actions attributed to Sanger are taken out of context in order to claim that she had a racist agenda. Katz said that Sanger "certainly didn't want to wipe out the black race", and that it is "stupid" to argue otherwise.[5] Katz acknowledges that Sanger "made mistakes" in her campaign for birth control and that debating her role in the eugenics movement would be "reasonable".[5] The online blog for the MSPP which Katz edits describes the film as "propaganda."[1] Journalist Michelle Goldberg called it "dishonest propaganda".[4]

The eugenics movement in the US certainly targeted African Americans, but the film falsely implies that this was the main thrust of eugenics. Instead, a far greater effort was made by American eugenicists to limit the populations of Asian immigrants, Mexican immigrants, and Mexican Americans.[12] The film quotes leading eugenicist Charles Davenport making a racist statement, but then the film fails to inform the viewer that Davenport was against birth control. As well, the film does not tell the viewer that Hitler banned abortion and birth control for ethnic Germans.[4]

• Official website
• Maafa 21 at IMDb