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Greetings avid readers, My newest and Best Selling Children's Book is Mommy Says! You can read all about my fastest growing publication yet, on www.facebook.com/mommyssay. I will be book signing in Harlem, New York on August 15th, 2015 at Uptown Sisters Bookstore and Cultural Center on 1942 Amesterdam Ave, 156th Street and August 16th at Grandma's Place, 84 W, 120th Street, Harlem. This book has been chosen by the Children's Defense Fund, as part of their "Freedom School" program curriculum listing 2016. I hope to see you all there! Sincerely, Rosheena Beek Author

Planned Parenthood never forces any woman to have an abortion or to use birth control. They are there for the women who choose to do this, and these are just 2 services they make available to women who can also go to them for treatment for STDs, and other women's health issues. And is there really any advantage to black women or any other woman for that matter, to having more children than she wants to have? If having a brood of kids guarantees more money from welfare, then what positive impact does this have? Should poor unmarried black women, for instance, just keep having more children to supply cannon fodder for the violent conditions in the inner cities, which in turn provide inmates for the prison industry anxiously awaiting to incarcerate young black men? And it's not like middle class white females don't have abortions. The whole concept of planned parenthood is a woman's issue and the opposition to it is all about the Religious Right Wing Conservative culture of exercising control over women. Black militant males are the first to associate planned parenthood with genocide but obviously this argument pales in the face of the black on black crime that is rampant among the ranks of fatherless black youth who die by the gun in a delayed form of abortion.

A Catholic nun put the position of the pro-life zealots in great perspective when she said they are not pro-life, they are pro birth, because their presumptuous intrusion into women's lives ends the moment a baby is born. Where are these self-appointed do-gooders when it comes to the plight of the millions of abused and abandoned children crowding the rolls of DCFS, or leading miserable lives in foster homes? My personal feeling on this controversial subject have always been that motherhood should not be a punishment for an accident, but a privilege for a woman who decides to have a child. My input to the semantic discussions about when life begins is that an embryo/fetus may be a life form but it is not living until it breathes and is conscious of its surroundings. There are scientific arguments that support this view as well as the one that life begins at conception. The figures show that most abortions are done during the first trimester in the embryonic stage. People just can get the idea out of their heads that an embryo is a minature baby that will grow into a full sized one. Not so. It is a "parasitic" organism containing all the DNA necessary to become a human entity. Furthermore, to me, a woman's body is her sole domain and its nobody's business what she chooses to do in regard to bringing a child into this world. The father? In my opinion, his rights are secondary. The jury is still out on that. Planned Parenthood responded to the recent right-wing conservative propaganda machine attacks on it and refuted the histrionic arguments and half truths and accusations like the ones in the article posted above, by explaining that the benefits that accrue from the use of fetal tissue in scientific research outweigh the alternative of letting it go to waste. It's not a stretch to say that one woman's abortion can contribute to saving the life of another woman's sick child. Also, the sale of fetal tissue is not a new practice, and is not illegal. Planned Parenthood also said the woman having abortions were made aware of this. Democrats voted down the recent Republican attempt to stop funding Planned Parenthood, which is bound to become a hot button issue in the upcoming election. Planned Parenthood, although accused of originally practicing eugenics, has always been about a woman not having more children than she can manage, the rationale being that this is not fair to the other children a poor, over burdened mother is already trying to care for. (I know, there are anecdotal rebuttals to this, - extolling the virtues of big happy poor families.) It's so easy for people to say they are against abortion because it is "murder" or a form of genocide. It's like those who say they are against homosexuality because the bible says it's an abomination and that its type of sex is sodomy. It's not that simplistic. Ethics and morals and religion are all subjects open to debate. Gay people are what they are, and should not have to be judged. Abortion is, indeed, something that's between, a woman, a doctor, and her god. It should also be taken into consideration that if The Government can intrude on a woman's personal life and tell her she must have a baby, this is setting a precedent for it being authorized to intrude on her personal life and tell her must not have a baby.