Alveda King, the niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said she has revealed family secrets regarding abortion dur­ing personal testimonies and in print ever since 1983, when she “became born again.”

King, 60, recently told some of her story in a telephone interview with The Cath­o­lic Spirit. She will reveal more during a keynote speech at a benefit gala for the University Life­Care Cen­ter on Thursday, Nov. 18., she said. (See the article on this page.)

“My mom wanted to abort me in 1950, but my granddaddy stopped her and told her he had seen me in a dream three years before,” King said. That was one of the first of her personal family secrets.

“I had two secret abortions . . . and a miscarriage that was related to the abortions,” she continued.

“Sometimes when I talk, I miss some of the details,” she said. “In the telling, I’ll try to shorten it or abbreviate it and it comes out two or three different ways and then my critics say, ‘She says this but it was really that.’”

So, King has written the exact de­tails in an online testimony at http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/testimonies/alveda-king.html, at http://www.priestsforlife.org and in “How Can the Dream Sur­vive if we Murder the Children?” (AuthorHouse 2008).

When King again became pregnant in the mid-1970s, her grandfather told her, “That is not a lump of flesh, it is a child.”

“I believed that it was a person,” she said. But, she didn’t become “totally pro-life” until her spiritual experience in 1983.

Changing views

King, a Protestant, said she met Fath­er Frank Pavone, Priests for Life founder, when the two were both scheduled to speak at a right-to-life meeting in New York in the late 1990s.

“We realized we had a lot in common concerning the pro-life issues,” she said. That brief meeting led to King’s involvement with the Cath­o­lic organization and the fulfillment of a dream.

“My uncle said he had a dream that Protestants and Catholics and gentiles and Jews would work to­gether,” she said. “The issue of life is for everybody and it works well for us together.”
King, who is a pastoral associate with Priests for Life and coordinator of its Afri­can American Outreach, ad­dres­ses various leaders and groups about abortion in the African-Amer­i­can community and elsewhere.

“Abortion is a human issue. It just happens that the black community was more targeted by the genocide and eugenics movement headed up by Margaret Sanger and Planned Par­ent­hood,” said King, who en­cour­ages people to visit the website  http://www.toomanyaborted.com for more information on black pro-life acti­vism.

King also has been active with the Silent No More Awareness Cam­paign, which encourages anyone who has been affected by an abortion to find a recovery program.

“All women say the same thing when they hear me [speak about my abortion experience],” she said. “They thank me for my testimony. Often, they will tell me that they  experienced the same thing.”

Finding healing

Although King began speaking about her experiences before she attended a Rachel’s Vineyard Re­treat for healing from an abortion, she tells others to get their healing first and then “step out and be silent no more.”

The retreat was a “personal and inti­mate time” that King would not talk about for publication.

“Some­times I will talk about it in intimate settings,” she said. “It did help me and made a big difference; and everybody that attends, says the same thing.”

Silent No More, Rachel’s Vine­yard Retreats and other healing minis­tries are all part of the awareness and education campaign that is needed to end abortion, she said.

“Some people do things with legislation and politics. Some people are on the prayer campaign. Some people are on the awareness campaign. Some people are in the pregnancy care centers. Some people go to the clinic and stand with the signs. It takes all of that,” she said.

“I’d like to see it go beyond [ending] legalized abortion. I’d like for abortion to be unthinkable,” King said. “The people need to know how bad it is and how it hurts the woman, how it hurts the man, the family and society.”

Benefit for U-LifeCare

» What: Alveda King will be the keynote speaker at the 35th anniversary gala dinner for the University LifeCare Center.

» When: 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18.

» Where: Nicollet Island Pavilion, 40 Power St., Minneapolis.

» Cost: $75 per person or $600 per table of eight.

» Registration: Call (612) 623-3212 or visit ulife@lifecare.org by Nov. 8. No walk-in registration.