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Kanye West Issues Warning About High Cost of Abortion
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 24, 2011
Modified Feb 24, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 24, 2011
Modified Feb 24, 2011
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With a big pro choice/Planned Parenthood rally scheduled for downtown Saturday, and a possibly racist anti-abortion billboard sparking outrage, abortion was a hot topic on everyone's lips yesterday. So of course Kanye West had to share his thoughts. In a message to his 2.5 million followers, the rap star tweeted, "an abortion can cost a ballin' nigga up to 50gs maybe a 100. Gold diggin' bitches be getting pregnant on purpose. #STRAPUP my niggas!" Sage advice from the man who wrote the definitive song about gold diggers, plus a relief to those "niggas" who aren't "ballin" and thus have nothing to lose. Meanwhile, in SoHo, that anti-abortion billboard was met with revulsion.
The billboard, which shows a picture of a black girl with the caption, "The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb," will be up for another three weeks. For some New Yorkers, that's three weeks too many. "It ruined my day," Heide Deruiter, a lower East Side resident, told the Daily News. "It's a very difficult time to be a woman in the world right now." City Councilman Charles Barron told amNY, "Tear that thing down! It needs to come down immediately." And another local whose office window faces the billboard says, "I hate it. I think it's racist. Any woman who wants to have an abortion should be able to."
Even Rev. Derek McCoy, a board member of the group that paid for the billboard, admits, "We do think we've gone too far, and we do think it's over the edge." But he thinks extreme situations call for extreme action, and explains, "The city's abortion rates have crossed the mark and are over the top." And on the group's website, founding member Stephen Broden warns that "our future is in jeopardy as a genocidal plot is carried out through abortion." Please, won't anyone think of the ballin' niggas?
Tagged
abortion billboard
anti-abortion
ballin
kanye
kanye west
pro choice
pro-life
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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