Tell Pornhub and Planned Parenthood That Black Lives Matter

Over the last month, global protests have been drawing attention to the unjust treatment of minority communities. As an organisation and as a slogan Black Lives Matter has captured the world’s attention.

In America particularly, police departments are facing serious scrutiny in an effort to root out racial bias and corruption. The Minneapolis Police—whose officers were responsible for George Floyd’s unjust death—is even being disbanded.

Many have suggested an unbroken link between systemic injustice today and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to which most black Americans trace their roots. But for all the talk about a slavery that was outlawed 150 years ago, there’s an eerie silence about the slavery that continues today.

Pornhub is the world’s largest pornographic website, receiving some 42 billion visits every year. Users can upload their own content and view that of others, resulting in a vast video library of rape, revenge porn, abuse and torture—including that of children.

Several Pornhub-linked kidnapping cases have recently made the news, such as 15-year-old Rose Kalemba. As a result, Pornhub has been forced to remove the offending content. But even after 118 confirmed cases of child abuse, Pornhub itself remains untouched as a sex trafficker’s dream, rewarding the most popular content with monetised ads.

The company recently took to Twitter to polish its halo. It declared, “Pornhub stands in solidarity against racism and social injustice,” and it encouraged followers to donate to anti-racist charities.

But the New York Post has called Pornhub out on its hypocrisy. An article by anti-porn campaigner Laila Mickelwait highlighted recent Pornhub content like a video entitled “I Can’t Breathe” that made use of search tags such as “George Floyd” and “choke-out”.

Mickelwait went on: “Countless other titles on Pornhub feature variations on the N-word and “white master”. Exploited black teens” and “black slave” are suggested search terms deliberately promoted by Pornhub to its users.”

If you would like to tell Pornhub that black lives matter, you can join a million others in signing the Trafficking hub petition. The petition’s goal is to shut down Pornhub and hold its executives accountable for aiding sex trafficking. (Click here to sign the petition).

Planned Parenthood is another corporate giant causing immense harm to minority communities. In fact, if you were on the hunt for a still-thriving organisation to “cancel” for its racist past, you couldn’t find a better candidate.

With unblinking irony, Planned Parenthood also tweeted its self-righteous indignation, saying, “We’re devastated, grieving, and outraged by violence against Black lives.” This, despite the fact that Planned Parenthood kills an estimated 250 unborn black Americans every day.

Planned Parenthood was founded by the racist eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. In a 1939 private letter, Sanger wrote, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” To this day, Planned Parenthood celebrates Sanger as a ‘woman of heroic accomplishments.’

And it continues to carry out her ambitions. The Guttmacher Institute, once Planned Parenthood’s research division, found that African-American women are five times more likely to choose abortion over white women. This data is used by Planned Parenthood with deadly effect.

In 2010, census statistics revealed that almost 80 percent of its surgical abortion clinics were within walking distance of African-American or Hispanic communities. Today, over one-third of Planned Parenthood’s 340,000 abortions are carried out on black babies, even though the black community makes up only 13 percent of America’s population.

As America’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood receives over US$500 million in federal tax dollars. If you would like to take a practical stand against systemic racism and tell Planned Parenthood that black lives matter, you can join 700,000 others in signing Live Action’s petition to defund the abortion giant. (Click here to sign the petition).

There really is no point saying that black lives matter if we don’t actually mean it.