Pro-Black, Pro-Life with Cherilyn Holloway

In this episode, Herb is joined by Cherilyn Holloway, the founder of Pro-Black Pro-Life, to discuss ways the pro-life movement can better support the Black community.

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Transcript:

Voiceover Intro: Hello, and welcome to episode 11 of the Rehumanize podcast.

Herb Geraghty: Hello everyone. Herb Geraghty here, back on the Rehumanize podcast. Today, I am joined by Cherilyn Holloway, the founder of a new organization called Pro-Black Pro-Life. Welcome Cherilyn. So just first off the bat, what is the mission of Pro-Black Pro-life?

Cherilyn Holloway: The mission of Pro-Black Pro-Life is to reach inside the black community and to sit knee-to-knee and talk about the systemic issues that they face on a daily basis while also introducing them to the issue of life and abortion that's also happening in our community. And I just believe that in order to do that, we have to build trust and they have to understand that we are for them and not against them, but that they recognize that abortion is something that's happening in our community--to us and not for us.

Herb Geraghty: So I think the listeners of the Rehumanize podcast typically would, I would say know what it means to be pro-life. But I think that pro-black might be new to some of them. So could you just talk a little bit about what that means to you? How do you be pro-black?

Cherilyn Holloway: Yeah, I think that the pro-life movement has done an excellent job of polarizing and keeping out the black community in terms of talking about racism outside of abortion. And so the term pro-black just says that we are for the advancement of the black community at every stage of life. And saying that is really in camaraderie with what they're already seeing with Black Lives Matter and the other issues that they're facing, but also saying that I'm also pro-life. And so you can be both. Being pro-life does not put you in a box that says that you're a bunch of other things; being pro-life stands alone, just like being pro-black stands alone. And more so, being pro-black doesn't mean that we're anti-white. It just means that we focus on the issues that are in my community in order to bring them full circle, and understanding what it means to support whole life.

Herb Geraghty: You mentioned the sort of mainstream, traditional pro-life movement. Can we talk a little bit about where you think the pro-life movement, as it is now, sort of succeeds and fails when it comes to reaching the black community?

Cherilyn Holloway: I think the pro-life movement succeeds at reaching the black community with their pregnancy centers. I think pregnancy centers have missions to reach all abortion-minded women, and they desperately want to reach even outside of their community. And so I feel like in that situation, they are completely whole life. They understand the importance. But I think the pro-life message has been construed as a political message, and when we do that, we really polarize and keep people outside of the movement. Because if I'm not pro-Trump Republican then I can't be pro-life, or if I say I'm pro-life, then people are going to automatically think I'm those [additional] things. And we have not done a great job of saying, "No no no, pro-life is just a part of what your beliefs are, and it does not mean any of the other things." Just like when I say I'm pro-black doesn't mean that I don't believe that other image bearers matter. It just means that this is the part of my community that I'm relating to that is struggling right now and that they need help. And I think that the pro-life movement has failed us in terms of really not allowing that messaging in, by saying, "We're not talking about that, we need to have this narrative that says just this one thing on abortion and the abortion commute and the abortion industry," and not allowing for the other experience of black people to come in and to help shape that.

Herb Geraghty: I would say that as someone who--I've tried to be a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, I try to be knowledgeable on these issues, but I'm also very active within the traditional pro-life movement. I've definitely seen that. I've seen my sort of, what I see as an innocuous Twitter post--just #blacklivesmatter--something that I think is, you know, an obvious thing to say, can come across to certain people within the wider conservative movement especially, but also [within] the pro-life movement, as, you know, an attack against them in some way, or an attack against white people or an attack against their values. And I think for me, I have a hard time sort of bridging that gap because I think that we're talking past each other a lot of the time.

Herb Geraghty: I think that, in the way that when I say I'm pro-life and then all my, you know, fellow left-leaning LGBT friends assume that means that I'm a bigot and that I'm with Donald Trump on all of his policies, the same thing sort of happens when I say black lives matter. Pro-lifers think that that means that, you know, I'm a Planned Parenthood clinic escort and I support the Democratic Party, or I'm Antifa; sort of all these things that they, you know, have major issues with. And I think that it's so important for people like you, who can be a representative of sort of both sides of this very polarized debate, to say, "No, these aren't in conflict at all. In fact, these go together. You know, I'm pro-black because I'm pro-life, I'm pro-life because I'm pro-black. They don't contradict each other at all." And I think it's so important that people, you know, with your message, get that across, because without the black community, we're not gonna win this fight. Without the black community, even if, you know, abortion is illegal, we're still going to be losing, you know, how, how many millions of black children every year, how many black women are going to be hurt. So I think that this message is so crucial.

Cherilyn Holloway: Yeah. And I think that the thing is that we, as humans, love to put people in a box, right? Putting people in a box, putting people in categories makes us feel better about ourselves, because then we feel like we know how to treat people. Like if I agree with you on this, I know how to treat you. Instead of just looking at it from a grand scheme of, of like, I'm just going to treat everyone with kindness and love and really take time to hear what they have to say. Instead of feeling like everything is a defensive attack on my beliefs. If you are a Christ follower and you believe that we are all image bearers, then you should believe that black lives matter. That's not to say that you have signed up and are donating to the Black Lives Matter organization, because we're talking about two totally different things. No one owns the phrase "black lives matter."

Herb Geraghty: Yeah.

Cherilyn Holloway: You can say "black lives matter" without being a Marxist. Like, you can say it, it's fine. And saying that doesn't mean that other people don't matter. But what we're talking about right now is this point in particular that the pro-life movement has continued to talk about over and over and over again--is the abortion rate in the black community. If you are going to continue to make this point over and over and over again, then be prepared to talk about all the other issues. If you want my community to respond to your efforts to teach them that this is genocide, that Margaret Sanger was racist, and that the whole entire abortion industry was built on racism, then you have to wrap it around your brain that the banking industry, the healthcare industry, the housing industry, all those things too, were also built on systemic racism. Like, that's what we're dealing with.

Cherilyn Holloway: We're dealing with those on a daily basis, and what you are communicating to my community is, "We only care about this one thing. We only see racism this one way." And we're not going to listen to that. And so when you wanna know why we're not showing up, it's because we don't trust you. We don't trust you because you're not listening to us. You're not listening to our experiences. When a man has a knee on his neck for 8 minutes and 47 seconds, the first thing you go to is his, like, arrest record. Like, at what point in time does that even matter? Because you're telling me that my child in the womb has rights. It's an innocent child and it has rights. So if this person has an arrest record, all of a sudden they lose these rights? Like, it's a conflict, you know?

Cherilyn Holloway: And I just feel like that is where the pro-life movement continues to really disable their voice in my community, really discredit anything that they would ever have to say. And [it] allows people to say, "I'm going to continue to vote this way. I'm going to continue to speak this way, because this group over here clearly doesn't care about me." Like, they won't even address the issue. Every time an issue comes up, they defer to black-on-black crime, or they defer to, like, what criminal thing this person does. Or it's always like, "Oh, they were shot in their car at point blank range by a police officer? Well, what did they do?" Well, if they didn't try to shoot the police officer, what difference does it make?

Cherilyn Holloway: Like, nothing really makes sense at that point that would take that person's life. And that's what as pro-lifers we're trying to communicate to the women in the black community when they're going to Planned Parenthood, they're going to the abortion clinic. Like, whatever you're dealing with right now, it's fine. You can get over it, just bring this baby earth side. But once that baby becomes an actual living, breathing child, then we're like, "Eh, thank you. Thank you for doing that for us. Now, if they die at the hands of the police, or they die at the hands of, you know, a healthcare system from infant mortality, or they die at the hands of, you know, poverty, or from growing up in the ghetto from redlining, none of that really matters to us. What matters is that we're no longer aborting these babies in the womb. But we are killing them outside of the womb."

Cherilyn Holloway: And that's what they're hearing. And so I feel like the pro-life movement--and being a movement that has tried to shape a narrative in a way that they thought was going to be powerful if everybody was saying the same thing at the same time--did not understand that unity is not uniformity. That, in a way, to make sure that we all come together does not mean that we all have to be saying the exact same thing at the exact same time. That we can all be moving in the exact same direction in different lanes, talking to different people. And sometimes those lanes, those people will intersect lanes, but we're all moving to the same goal that life matters. It is important and we value it.

Herb Geraghty: Absolutely. What you were talking about reminded me of a great meme that I saw recently, that I just learned today you [yourself] made. It was a viral meme. It went all over the pro-life community, especially within the, sort of, consistent life ethic pro-life community, but this idea, it was very well communicated in a meme, but this idea that: pro-lifers believe that racism exists, but only in abortion, and pro-choicers believe that racism exists in everything except for abortion. And I think that, you know, I overuse the word "inconsistent" I think, but it's just so inconsistent. We can recognize the reality, especially for those of us who I would say believe in the concept of systemic racism and also think that it is bad (it's so obviously backed by data), [systemic racism] is both present in all of those systems that you mentioned, whether it's healthcare or especially criminal justice, or all of these systems; in business, in the way our economy is structured, from slavery until today. [But] it so obviously is also present in the abortion industrial complex. [The idea] that it wouldn't be, doesn't even make sense considering what we know about American history.

Cherilyn Holloway: Yes. Yeah. And I think that, it's really amazing to me that, for one that that post went viral.

Herb Geraghty: Yeah, that was, you were sort of first starting this project and immediately everyone was talking about you.

Cherilyn Holloway: So, I remember I made that comment a couple of times, like a year ago, just in conversation with someone, and it just baffled me that I would have this conversation with people. And when I would talk about abortion and racism, they would just have this blank stare like, "No, look, we need that access." Or when I would talk about racism aside from abortion, they were like, "No, well, we're past that. We're past racism in America. Like, we had a black president. There's no racism. Just [with] abortion. This is the only place." And I was just so struck by that; like wow, this is a real thing. And it was actually Destiny De La Rosa that said to me, "You really need to make a meme of that." And I'm like, I'm not a graphic designer.

Cherilyn Holloway: I can talk a lot, but I'm not putting anything in a meme. And so when I began to work on my social media posting and I had to choose marketing that was actually working on the graphics and I was like, "Here's what I want to say." And our graphic designer--that was attempt number one. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is perfect." I didn't expect it to go viral. I really didn't. But I think that the fact that it went viral just attests to this idea that, this is the message that we've been getting. The message is so inconsistent. And people are recognizing it, like, "Wait a minute." Because when I have the conversation one-on-one and I say to people that have never thought about abortion having to do with systemic racism, and we talk about it and we talk about the numbers and we talk about the founder and we talk about the documents.

Cherilyn Holloway: They're like, "Oh, it makes perfect sense." Or when I talk to history teachers or professors of Africana studies, and I say, "Did you know this?" And they look at me like, of course we knew that. This is history. This is well-documented history. And anyone who denies this is just denying the facts. That's what it really boils down to. Regardless of what side you're on, you're just denying the facts: the facts that these things were put in place, and we have not--this is not something we can just go in and tweak a couple of things and fix, regardless if it's systemic racism and all the other issues, or systemic racism and abortion, we just can't walk in and tweak a couple things and fix it. We've tried that. We've tried that with diversity and inclusion programs.

Cherilyn Holloway: We tried that with, you know, sensitivity programs. You can't just go in and tweak a couple things. You have to tear the system down and rebuild it. That's what's the problem is. If we're talking about the Rockefellers or other families and generations of people that have perpetuated this over years, that are in charge of our banking systems and our housing systems and our prison systems, we have to go in and tear those down and restructure them. Because regardless of how many generations we are removed from it, this is still family upbringing, family, teaching, family ingrained--like, this is the way we're supposed to think. There is white supremacy, and maybe that's not what grandpa called it. You know, maybe grandpa called it preserving our family history or lineage or future, like, this is what we have to do. And so you believe that you're doing something that's very model and helpful to your family.

Cherilyn Holloway: But really what you're doing is perpetuating white supremacy. And so we have to go in and be willing to tear the system down and say, "Okay, let's stop advocating for the Hyde amendment to be appealed, and let's figure out why is it that a woman feels like our society is so hostile that she would rather kill her unborn child than to bring it into this world? What have we created that would make a woman feel like that?" That's the question we should be asking not, "Oh, well this is an economic"---no, no, no, no, no. Because if we are 70 years removed from the suffrage movement, why is it that our corporations, that our universities don't have childcare? Why don't we have maternal housing? Why, if we're so strong as women, so strong as bringers of life, why haven't we demanded this?

Cherilyn Holloway: These are the things that we should be working to mend. There's not a woman in the United States of America who finds herself pregnant prior to entering medical school that should have to make the decision whether to bring her child into this world or abort, because she won't be able to start medical school. This is 2020, are you kidding me?

Herb Geraghty: Yeah.

Cherilyn Holloway: That medical school should have free childcare and a place for her to live with that child. Period. Because if we care about women and what they're able to do, the super power--whether you decide to use it or not--the super power that you have of bringing forth life, that's the thing we should be fighting for. We shouldn't be fighting for wanting to be more like men in a way that, "I should not have to have this baby if I don't want to," or "I can't advance in my career." It's 2020. You should be able to advance in your career with your baby by your side. Like, this is crazy.

Herb Geraghty: Absolutely. Something that I always say from--I come from a more left-wing perspective, is that abortion is a tool of the capitalist class. It's very common for pro-life feminists to be talking about how, you know, abortion perpetuates and is a tool of patriarchy. But in addition, your boss benefits when you get an abortion.

Cherilyn Holloway: Absolutely, absolutely.

Herb Geraghty: The CEO of whatever company you're working for benefits if he doesn't have to pay maternity leave. If he doesn't need to deal with the healthcare that that child is going to take from now on. And our society has decided that we value, of course, the male-normative body that can't get pregnant, and our society values those bosses and CEOs' profits over life. [Over] bringing new life into the world, or at least not snuffing life out that already is in this world. And it's, to me, so important to get this message out--not just to the left.

Herb Geraghty: Because I think that the left and the people within the Democratic Party--obviously, many African-Americans involved in both of those groups--um, it's important to get this message to them, but it's also vitally important to get this message to the pro-life movement so that they will shut up when we're talking about these issues. Because without these perspectives, without, you know, being able to talk to abortion-minded people in the language that they understand, we're not going to be able to reach them. You know, a conservative Christian might be completely right when he's talking about family values and, you know, responsibility and, you know, everything that you can imagine a white conservative Christian man telling a woman why she should keep her pregnancy and not abort her child. I probably agree with most of what he's saying, but if you're not able to speak to her in a language that she understands, if you're not able to speak to her and let her know that you're able to help her because you understand the injustices she faces every day and you're working with her to tear down those systems of injustice, you're not going to be able to reach them.

Cherilyn Holloway: Yeah.

Herb Geraghty: And it's so important, I think, for the wider pro-life movement to make space for voices like yours so that we can reach everyone. You know, something that, again, I say a lot is that we're not going to end abortion if we don't have everyone on board.

Cherilyn Holloway: Yeah.

Herb Geraghty: You know? This is the Rehumanize podcast, so I only talk about things that I think are important, but it is so important. I say it over and over again, but it's so necessary to make sure that we are, you know, giving a platform to women of color, particularly black women of color. I always am excited for atheist black women of color, because, you know, you're a Christian, but we need people who resemble, both ideologically and also physically, the abortion-minded population, because that is who is most effective at reaching them.

Cherilyn Holloway: Yeah. And I will say that I am Christian, I was born and raised Christian, but this was never talked about in my church. And so I didn't come to my beliefs from a biblical standpoint until after, um, years after where I realized, "Oh, wait, it's in the Bible too?" And so it was really just me, my own struggles after my abortion feeling like something wasn't right in the decisions I made after that, of feeling like my self worth was so low. And I couldn't understand why. I thought I was in control, but I wasn't in control. It was so messy. So, so messy. And it wasn't until I was in my thirties where I realized like, wait, let's go back. And let's revisit these other choices that I made and see where things could have kind of gotten... the wires could have gotten tangled.

Cherilyn Holloway: And I realized that it was during my abortions that I, you know, I have two prior abortion choices. One when I was 15 and one when I was about 29, and, um, I didn't realize it at the time. When I was 29, I knew I was wrong. I knew what I was doing. I had already had two kids. And I knew exactly what I was doing. No one had to tell me like, "Oh, it's no big deal. It's a clump of cells." I've brought these clumps of cells earth side. Like, I know the possibility. So I knew what I was doing. And after that, I knew I needed help. I needed some type of healing. And through that is when I began to be able to process and really kind of understand that as women, there is a deeper connection when we are pregnant.

Cherilyn Holloway: Something begins to happen from our mind to our heart, to our body, that is not something that can be explained. It's not necessarily that you feel this feeling of motherhood, because that's a lie, but there's something else chemically and emotionally happening that when it's gone, those things don't go away. And I felt lied to, and I felt like I wanted to warn women. I wanted to warn women that if you make this choice, it will not go away. If you make this choice, this choice will not keep you from your behavior. Like, you can say, "Oh, I promise if I make this choice, I will change." It's not--this is not the defining factor. And actually, this is going to make you feel worse. And this is going to potentially have you making other decisions that you will not connect until maybe even 10, 15 years down the road.

Cherilyn Holloway: So that's what brought me into the movement initially: my own experience and wanting to warn women. Like, "If you make that decision, I will still be here when you're done, but please understand it does not erase it. It just will not just go away. You will then begin to have to deal with other things." And, you know, I also feel like when we talk about the pro-life movement and we talk about systemic racism, when we talk about even the whole life issue, that people in the movement that don't feel like that is their call[ing]--whether you're in apologetics or you are just advocating for that baby in the womb, that's okay. It's okay. You're not wrong. Like, I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm not saying that your call is not your call; but then don't feel like me being pro-black and pro-life is wrong because it doesn't match what you're doing.

Cherilyn Holloway: You know? What I'm doing should not offend you in any way. It should not make you feel like I'm threatening you in any way. Like, there are plenty of people that can do apologetics around and around and around me, and as being someone who's pro-life, would still not be to be able to keep up because that's not my call. That doesn't mean that because I'm pro-black and pro-life that your call is unnecessary, right? No, we need you, too. We need all of the pieces to the puzzle to bring this forth. And you said this today, Herb, in your speech--we need everybody, we need all of the voices. And I think that it's interesting that this is a movement that feels like if someone says something different, even if they're anti-abortion, or even if they're pro-life or whatever you want to call it, they feel like when somebody says something different, they're like, "[Gasp] No, we can't, we can't--don't promote that. That's so different than what we're trying to do."

Cherilyn Holloway: No, no, no. Be free. You have a calling: fulfill your calling. Be free in that. And you may run into someone, you may run into that black woman that's like, "Oh, I just feel like people don't care about the plight of black America. I feel like you only care about the pro-life movement." That's when you say, "Hey, have you heard of Cherilyn Holloway? She is someone you can talk to." Because what you know for sure is that I will speak up about abortion. Like, you know that for sure. And you may not be able to reach them on the pro-black issue. And you may not want to reach them on the pro-black issue, because that may not be your thing, but you have someone to direct them to.

Cherilyn Holloway: If someone says to me, "Hey, Cherilyn, I feel it. And I'm also, you know, anti-war and I'm pro LGBTQ and all these things, where can I go?" And I'm like, Rehumanize. That's where you need to go. Like, you know, LGBTQ for life. That's where you need to go. There's a place for you. It may not be my lane, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong. And I feel like that's the thing that kept me so long from using my voice--is this feeling that people, the voices around me kept saying, "You're wrong. We don't need you. We need more people saying this [particular thing], we need more people saying the same thing that we're saying." And it got to a point when the Ahmaud Arbery shooting happened, and it finally came to life, where I just felt like, the time is now. It's time. As in NOW. People are hurting and they're hearing again the same thing, like, "Oh, well, what did he do?" You know? And people are frustrated by that. Like, he didn't do anything that caused him to lose his life. And his--at one point in time, he was an unborn child. I need you to fight for him now, just as you would have when he was in the womb. And if you can't do that, send the people to me.

Herb Geraghty: Cherilyn, thank you so much. I don't think I have anything to add to that. Do you have anything that you would like to promote? Where can we find you? How can we support your work?

Cherilyn Holloway: Oh, you can find me everywhere. So I have a Facebook page @problackprolife1619, same thing Instagram, @problackprolife1619. YouTube Pro-Black Pro-Life, I do videos. They're really just history-based, little short snippet-like lessons, things for you to think about. You can email me at cherilyn@problackprolife.com. I think that's it. I think those are all the places that you can find me.

Cherilyn Holloway: I do--there's also a podcast, PBPL Conversations, which really is just me walking out what I am encouraging other people to do. So it's, like, me showing you, how do you have conversations with people that live in different areas or have different viewpoints of you in your community? And so, there's conversation up right now with Christina Bennett. There's a conversation up with Regan Philips who believes that, you know, the access that Planned Parenthood has given in our community, the black community and our neighborhood, supersedes the--what they do in abortion. And that's a conversation I feel like everyone should listen to. She's a dear friend of mine. There's a conversation with M-J Xavier, who lives in the UK, talking about what racism looks like over there and what abortion looks like over there. She's a black woman who has an amazing story. And so that's another place that you can find us. That's PBPL Conversations on conversations on all of the podcast channels. Those are not edited, Herb. Like, those are what I call "I said what I said" podcasts.

Herb Geraghty: [Laughs] We could not do that. I am every day at grateful that we have Maria Oswalt on our staff, who can edit out all of the ridiculous things that I say when I'm trying to come up with the questions that I really want to ask.

Cherilyn Holloway: I typically ask five--the same five questions. That's my role, that's what I think saves me, is I typically try to ask the same five questions to every single person. But there is a lot of foolishness--a lot of like, wait, are we still recording? Could this be edited? No, it can't. I don't have those skills. I don't have a Maria. I don't have those skills. Sorry about your luck. [Laughs] Um, my YouTube videos are edited by Choose Life Marketing and the amazing production staff there. So I'm grateful for that because there are a lot of, like, pauses in those where I lose my train of thought. But as far as the podcasts, those are completely real conversations that have happened from the time we log on to the time we log off. And maybe one day I'll figure out how to add the intro and the outro. maybe I won't. I dunno. [Laughs]

Herb Geraghty: Well, thank you so much.

Cherilyn Holloway: My pleasure. It's always a pleasure, Herb. I love you and I love everything that Rehumanize does, and I will continue to support you guys to the end of time.

Herb Geraghty: Absolutely. I can't wait to work together in the future.

Voiceover Outro: Thanks for tuning in to the Rehumanize podcast. To learn more, check out our website at rehumanizeintl.org, or follow us on social media @rehumanizeintl.

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Intro/outro music: "Belize," by Monty Datta. https://montydatta.bandcamp.com/track/belize 

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Learn more about Rehumanize International at rehumanizeintl.org!