Alveda King: A Voice for the Voiceless

CBN.com Alveda King comes from a legacy of dreamers. She is the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. Her grandfather, Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., was a dreamer and so was her father, A. D. Williams King who was a high profile leader in the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., dreamed of having his children judged by the content of their character, and Alveda King dreams of the rights of babies who are artificially breached before coming to term in his or her mother’s womb.

“My mother wanted to abort me, and that was basically a family secret. My grandfather stopped her and said that he had a dream and saw me perfectly. He was a prophetic dreamer, like Martin.”

Alveda is a pro-life activist and a post-abortive mother. Today, she has six living children, but in the early 1970s, she suffered one involuntary and one voluntary abortion.

“My involuntary abortion was performed just prior to Roe v. Wade by my private physician without my consent,” she said. “I had gone to the doctor to ask why my cycle had not resumed after the birth of my son. I did not ask for and did not want an abortion. The doctor said, 'You don’t need to be pregnant. Let’s see.' He proceeded to perform a painful examination, which resulted in a gush of blood and tissue emanating from my womb. He explained that he had performed a 'local D and C.'"

Her doctor gave her an abortion under false pretenses. “He gave me an illegal abortion with no anesthesia,” she said.

Soon after the Roe v. Wade decision, in 1973, Alveda became pregnant again, and at age 22, she walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic and underwent a second abortion.

“Roe v. Wade made it too easy for me to make the fateful and fatal decision to abort my child. The doctor advised that the procedure would hurt no more than 'having a tooth removed,'” she said. However, the procedures damaged her cervix and forced her to miscarry another baby months later. The physical toll on her body and the emotional strain of the abortions led to the demise of her first marriage.

Over the next few years, Alveda experienced medical problems and had trouble bonding with her children who were born after the abortions. “My children have all suffered from knowing that they have a brother or sister that their mother chose to abort. Often they ask if I ever thought about aborting them,” she said.

As a result of her abortion, Alveda suffered from eating disorders, depression, nightmares, sexual dysfunctions and a host of other issues, and the guilt made her very ill. “I prayed often for deliverance from the pain caused by my decision to abort my baby. I suffered the threat of cervical and breast cancer and experienced the pain of empty arms after the baby was gone. And truly, for me, and countless abortive mothers, nothing on earth can fully restore what has been lost, only Jesus can.”

Alveda divorced two more times in her life, but she says when she met Jesus in 1983, He opened her eyes to the reality of what she had done and forgave her for destroying her babies. “God rescued me from a cycle of death, and the only thing that kept me from losing it was knowing I will one day see my babies in heaven,” she said.

Alveda was an unlikely woman to become a pro-life activist. The painful experience behind her abortion helped her uncover the lies used by the abortion industry. Today she is driven by spiritual conviction to defend the most vulnerable of human beings. “I join the voices of thousands across America, who are SILENT NO MORE. We can no longer sit idly by and allow this horrible spirit of murder to cut down, yes cut out and cut away our unborn, and destroy the lives of our mothers,” she said.

In 2000, Alveda traveled with Real Women’s Voices to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress and also then Illinois Senator Barack Obama. But she says when the group arrived at his office, the senator walked out the back door. “I saw him and said, ‘Hello, Sen. Obama.’ He looked down at the floor and walked away.” It’s a response Alveda is used to, but she says it won’t stop her from mounting the steps of Congress to keep the issue of abortion before lawmakers.

She also urges women around the country to go to their pastors and speak out. “Tell them abortion is bad for children; it’s destroying families. By taking the lives of our young, and wounding the wombs and lives of their mothers, we are flying in the face of God. We cannot play God. If we continue down this path of destruction, we will be met at the gates by our own doom. This is the day to choose life. We must live and allow our babies to live. We must end the pain of post-abortion trauma. If the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is to live, our babies must live. Our mothers must choose life. If we refuse to answer the cry of mercy from the unborn, and ignore the suffering of the mothers, then we are signing our own death warrants.”