You've Been Fadin', Always Out Paradin', Keep in Touch With Mama King

Sometimes you have to wonder if Alveda King is even capable of discussing issues not related to reproductive choice or of seeing issues through anything other than the spectrum of abortion:

Dr. Alveda King, Pastoral Associate of Priests for Life and niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is tired of the violence in American society ... "A pastor in Illinois is gunned down. Music stars make the news with their fists instead of their voices. Violence more and more intrudes where love and beauty should prevail," said Dr. King, "and I can't help but wonder if this would be the case if we hadn't let legalized violence brutalize people in what should be a haven of nurturing, the womb."

King goes on to liken herself to a "real life Madea, packing a Bible instead of a gun" and proclaims that "many young people who hear me speak have taken to calling me 'Mama King.'"

Interesting.  Of course, others who have heard her speak have taken to calling her "misleading":

Some students at Alveda King's speech Tuesday night did not expect a strictly literal interpretation of the advertised "life affirming choices" speech.

The niece of Dr. Martin Luther King spoke out strongly against abortion at her "Can the Dream Survive?" presentation in Warriner Hall's Plachta Auditorium. Some students were surprised to learn that was the topic of her lecture. Several of the about 650-person audience walked out.

"I felt a little misled personally," said Flint senior Detrone Turner, who said he thought the speech was going to be about increasing diversity.

Sponsored by The Student Budget Allocation Committee, The Office for Institutional Diversity and Students For Life, King presented a PowerPoint called "Can the Dream Survive If the Kids Are Dead?"

"That whole adding in 'can the dream survive if the kids were dead' was an aspect that I wasn't expecting," Turner said. "It kind of caught me off guard."

The article also contains a rather surprising piece of information of which I was previously unaware and don't fully know what to make:

A mother of several children, King admitted she had two abortions herself, but that she was tricked into the procedures. The doctor who performed her first abortion did not tell her that she was pregnant.

"I was pregnant and he didn't tell me. It was illegal. It was not 1973. Roe v. Wade had not passed," she said. "Really, I was pregnant (and) he didn't tell me."

The situation was similar for her second abortion.

Perhaps that explains her obsession with the issue, though this revelation only seems to raise more questions than in answers.