
Black American Stand4Life rally in Oakland highlights abortion’s toll
By Valerie Schmalz
With the ribbon-cutting for the largest Planned Parenthood in the U.S. just days away in Oakland, prolife advocates led by Black American pastor Walter Hoye rallied for life in front of City Hall and then walked through downtown calling for an end to abortion.
“We are taking a bold stand for life. We realize the negative impact abortion has had on the black community. Thousands upon thousands of babies have been killed in the black community,” Hoye said. “The number one cause of death is by abortion and Planned Parenthood leads the way.”

“We’re asking you to support, us strengthen us and bless us as we are going to win this fight,” said Hoye. Hoye will also speak on Saturday at the 21st annual Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco.
Today’s 18th annual Stand4Life Rally and Walk in Oakland may be the only Black American-organized prolife rally in the country during the month of January, Hoye said. Among those speaking and walking was Dr. Haywood Robinson, a former abortionist and founding member and now medical director of 40 Days for Life. At least twice as many black children are aborted than white children, Robinson said.
Some of those walking also stopped to kneel and pray outside what is being publicized as the largest Planned Parenthood in the U.S.

“We Walk Because: Abortion in the Black community is a form of genocide, it is the Darfur of America. We Walk Because: Abortion in Black America is the Civil Rights issue of our day. We Walk Because: Abortion does violence, both physically and emotionally, to men and women, to their children, and to their families,” the Issues4Life website states.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black women obtained 38% of reported abortions and have the highest abortion ratio in the country, with 386 abortions per 1,000 live births, Focus on the Family reported, citing the CDC’s 2019 Abortion Surveillance Report. More than three-quarters of surgical abortion clinics are within walking distance of black and Hispanic neighborhoods, the article noted.

Hoye first came to national attention in 2009 as a Baptist pastor who held a sign outside an Oakland abortion clinic that said, “ “God loves you and your baby. Let us help you.” Hoye went to jail for 18 days for violating Oakland’s buffer law, a law eventually found unconstitutional.

Among those speaking and singing was Gospel singer Joycelyn Diane Golden, who was raped, then had an abortion and decades later mourns her child, even as she said she has forgiven herself and God has forgiven her. She urged those attending to continue to speak up, to reach out to others even when it is uncomfortable. “I believed the lie that it’s just a lump of tissue,” she said.
The rally is sponsored by Hoye’s Issues4Life Foundation, a 501(c)3 dedicated to informing and supporting Black American leaders and particularly pastors and religious leaders about abortion. The effort is seeing quiet success, Hoye said, with a recent four-day retreat for pastors interested in finding effective ways to share the prolife message in their churches.
In his remarks at the rally, Robinson noted that 40 Days for Life will be launching nearly 700 vigils outside abortion clinics around the world. The end of Roe v. Wade did not end abortion because people have become accepting of abortion, he said. The 2,000 abortions a day in the U.S. are just one percent of abortion in the world, Robinson said. “This is about a global abortion genocide.”
