Pro-life activists Bevelyn Beatty and Edmee Chavannes — both of whom are black — are claiming discrimination after being arrested for protesting outside a Planned Parenthood clinic amid Black Lives Matter protests and riots.
Beatty, who was demonstrating outside the Margaret Sanger Health Center in New York City, said there is a double standard, pointing to the city’s refusal to enforce social distancing orders for those protesting the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, a white man.
“This is a clear statement of their bias now,” she told Fox News. “It’s blatant now. It’s really truly biased against Christians, against pro-life abolitionists.”
She went on to explain to the news outlet she believes it’s Christians who are treated “the worst,” noting she never had an issue with police “until I started doing this,” referring to her pro-life activism.
Chavannes agreed, noting yet another double standard: “Churches are closed in New York City but this place is open?”
As for the Black Lives Matter rallies, protests, and riots, Beatty said she doesn’t support the organization, calling the group’s leaders “fraudulent hypocrites.”
“We’re black women but we do not support Black Lives Matter because they’re hand-in-hand with Planned Parenthood that kills African-American babies,” she explained. “They’re fraudulent hypocrites … and I believe all lives matter, because God created them. There are thousands of George Floyds that die every day in their mother’s womb and it’s just as unjust as when he died at the hands of that police officer.”
The two women were told by police they were being arrested for refusing to leave the sidewalk in front of the abortion clinic on May 30, allegedly in violation of a social distancing order from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D). That interaction, though, happened as protests were heating up, with thousands of people descending on the city’s streets to protest Floyd’s unjust death.
Also this week, officers with the New York Police Department forced Hasidic Jewish children and their parents to leave a neighborhood playground in Brooklyn.
De Blasio has also forced businesses and places of worship to remain shuttered as protesters continue taking to the streets. The Democrat has made clear he sees no issue with the double standard.
“When you see a nation, an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seeded in 400 years of American racism,” he said. “I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services.”