An Anti-Choice Group Is Celebrating Juneteenth By Lying About a Black Suffragette to Legitimize Reproductive Oppression

This week, SBA Pro-Life America invented faux history of Ida B. Wells, ripping off her words and exploiting her image and legacy to achieve

Jun 19, 2026

Happy Juneteenth!

Recognized as the nation’s second independence day, Juneteenth National Independence Day commemorates the day— June 19, 1865 —on which Union Army soldiers, many of whom were Black, made their way into Galveston, Texas, with the Emancipation Proclamation in hand, and “announced to the people of Texas that all enslaved African Americans were free.” Because the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to Confederate states, slavery would not be abolished throughout the whole United States until later that year, on December 6, 1865, with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.1 Texas was the last of the Confederate states to receive the proclamation, a monumental moment. From henceforth, Juneteenth has been a celebration of freedom and self-ownership.

“Juneteenth places Black people at the center of the conversation about freedom, it's meaning and manifestation in this nation.”2

Unfortunately, today I bring you upsetting news: One of the nation’s most powerful anti-human rights groups has seized upon the occasion to hijack Juneteenth for its own repressive aims, going so far as to appropriate the words of a formerly-enslaved civil rights activist and suffragette—brazenly purloining her words, her name, her image, and her legacy. Even as someone who reports on anti-human rights groups’ lies, this shocked me.

Ida B. Wells (later Wells-Barnett)—born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862—was a tireless suffragette and a foundational civil rights leader. She was also an investigative journalist, a sociologist, an educator, and one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Like other suffragettes of her time, Wells advocated for voluntary motherhood, the radical notion that every woman should have autonomy of body, be able to reject unwanted sexual advances from her husband, and choose if and when she has children. In other words, the right of every woman to be “the owner of her own body.”3 Unfortunately, even today, this is still considered radical to some people.

Wells “often encountered racism within the suffrage movement itself.”4 During Reconstruction, “there were sometimes ‘calls for unity’ between Northern and Southern suffragists”;5 this lead to compromises being made “by Northern activists with Southern racism.”6 This, in turn, lead to a dispute between Wells and another suffragette, Frances Willard, after Willard made racist remarks in 1890. Willard responded by claiming that her words weren’t meant to be taken literally.

“Wells was unequivocal in her expectations that the white women in the suffrage movement must embrace Black women and stand by them in their fight against racial discrimination and violence.”7 She never hesitated to call out racism—even among friends and allies.

In 1895, Wells published A Red Record, an investigative and statistical report documenting the horror of lynching in the United States. Wells dedicated an entire chapter of the book to condemning Frances Willard for using racist rhetoric that promoted violence against Black people. The chapter is titled, “Miss Willard's Attitude.” Wells concluded this chapter with the following words. [*Note the portions which I have emboldened for emphasis, because we'll revisit it below.]

“… [M]y love for the truth is greater than my regard for an alleged friend who, through ignorance or design misrepresents in the most harmful way the cause of a long suffering race, and then unable to maintain the truth of her attack excuses herself as it were by the wave of the hand, declaring that ‘she did not intend a literal interpretation to be given to the language used.’ When the lives of men, women and children are at stake, when the inhuman butchers of innocents attempt to justify their barbarism by fastening upon a whole race the obloquy of the most infamous of crimes, it is little less than criminal to apologize for the butchers today and tomorrow to repudiate the apology by declaring it a figure of speech.”

“Wells was relentless in fighting for anti-lynching laws, but she was equally unrelenting in her fight for universal suffrage. Wells organized Black women around voting as a way of increasing civic engagement and as a tactic to promote anti-lynching laws.”8 In “How Enfranchisement Stops Lynchings,” a 1910 pamphlet, “Wells said states that denied the right to vote were emboldened in denying Black people the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”9 She wrote, “With no sacredness of the ballot, there can be no sacredness of human life itself.”

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (henceforth referred to as SBA Pro-Life) is an anti-human rights group that “sees[] trimming the electorate as essential to achieve their goals.”10 SBA Pro-Life opposes the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act11 and the For the People Act,12 and works with other anti-voting rights groups “to drive the state-by-state GOP efforts to limit voting.”13 *Of significance, some of those voting restrictions specifically target the Black community.

SBA Pro-Life also opposes granting full equality to women under the law14 —which, even in 2026, American women still do *not* have.

The organization was founded by a “pro-life feminist.” It's leaders claimed—and continue to claim—that Susan B. Anthony, the famous suffragette, was an anti-abortion advocate. The trouble is, that's a lie.

This lie began when “pro-life feminists” misattributed another person's words to Anthony, and then intentionally continued to misattribute those words even after being made aware of their error. In fact is, “Anthony spent no time on the politics of abortion. It was of no interest to her, despite living in a society (and a family) where women aborted unwanted pregnancies.”15 Like Ida B. Wells, Susan B. Anthony was an advocate for voluntary motherhood.

'Pro-Life Feminists' — A ventriloquial poem

S. P. Rogers

February 5, 2024

'Pro-Life Feminists' — A ventriloquial poem

Suffragist Alice Duer Miller used ventriloquism of anti-suffragist positions in her New York Tribune suffrage poetry column Are Women People? and in her 1915 book "Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times.” Back in 2012, after reading Alice Duer Miller’s poetry, writer Lili Loofbourow

Read full story

This week, SBA Pro-Life took its devilishly calculated misappropriation—and fabrication—of women’s history to a whole new, jaw-dropping level. On Monday, the anti-human rights, anti-voting rights group tweeted:

“Kicking off #Juneteenth week by honoring the profound legacy of Black women who paved the way as fearless pro-life advocates: civil rights icon Ida B. Wells and Dr. Mildred Fay Jefferson, the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Let's carry their courage forward.”

The tweet included the following image. (Featured in the image is SBA Pro-Life America’s logo—a small, circular silhouette of Susan B. Anthony.)

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) and Mildred Jefferson (1927-2010)

The image features portraits of Ida B. Wells (left) and Mildred Jefferson (right). In large, neon green lettering are the words, “The Legacy of Black Women Who Were Pro-Life Advocates.” Both the image and the text of SBA Pro-Life's tweet tell readers that both of these women were anti-choice activists. The trouble is, that's a lie.

While Mildred Jefferson was an anti-choice activist, Ida B. Wells was not. In fact, there is no historical evidence that Ida B. Wells opposed abortion nor that she supported the abortion bans that were passed in the wake of the Civil War. Like the claim that Susan B. Anthony was an anti-choice activist, the claim that Ida B. Wells was an anti-choice activist has been invented out of this air.

SBA Pro-Life's tweet contains a second image of Wells. At the top of the image, above her portrait, Wells’ words are quoted—again in large, neon green lettering: “When the lives of men, women and children are at stake… it is little less than criminal to apologize for the butchers today.”

Do those words sound familiar to you? They should! — Those very words are emboldened in the above passage from Ida B. Wells's book, A Red Record, that documents the lynching of Black Americans. The words come from the chapter entitled, “Miss Willard’s Attitude,” in which Wells condemned White suffragette Frances Willard for using racist rhetoric that promoted violence against Black people.

Missing in the quote, after the ellipsis, in the image above are the words, “when the inhuman butchers of innocents attempt to justify their barbarism by fastening upon a whole race the obloquy of the most infamous of crimes.” — This is a remarkable omission for the Juneteenth occasion. First, SBA Pro-Life America ripped Wells's words out of the context of racist lynch mobs and of Wells's repudiation of Willard's racist rhetoric. Then it omitted her words about race.

The full sentence repudiating Willard is as follows:

“When the lives of men, women and children are at stake, when the inhuman butchers of innocents attempt to justify their barbarism by fastening upon a whole race the obloquy of the most infamous of crimes, it is little less than criminal to apologize for the butchers today and tomorrow to repudiate the apology by declaring it a figure of speech.”

One of the main rules for using an ellipsis to omit words from a quotation is that doing so must never change the meaning of the original quote. And as you now well see, SBA Pro-Life’s use of an ellipsis, in combination with its false claims about Ida B. Wells, did indeed change the meaning of her original words.

When I saw these images and when I read SBA Pro-Life’s claim that Wells was an anti-choice advocate along with the shortened, decontextualized quotation, my jaw hit the floor. I felt sick. Like I needed to shower away the filth of SBA Pro-Life America’s sleazy lies, dirty politics, and opportunistic exploitation of a Black woman’s name, image, and legacy for unearned legitimacy.

TO BE CEAR: To “celebrate” Juneteenth, a majority White organization that stands in opposition to much of Ida B. Wells's life's work falsely labeled her a “pro-life advocate” and then chopped up her words in order to mislead readers into believing that the “butchers” she's referring to in her quote are OB-GYNs—not White lynch mobs.

To hide its White Supremacist policy goals behind the name and face of a Black historical figure.

To control Black women’s bodies and reproduction, a legacy of hereditary chattel slavery.

To snatch the focus of Juneteenth away from liberation to domination.

To center the archetypal (usually White) fetus, instead of the Black community and their continued struggle for full emancipation from systems of oppression and violence.

To legitimize SBA Pro-Life's authoritarian policy agenda that causes out-sized harm to Black people.

Even as someone who reports on anti-human rights groups’ lies, this shocked me. I honestly can’t find the words to adequately describe such shameless depravity. So, I’ll close with the words of Ida B. Wells, from the same passage of A Red Record:

“[M]y love for the truth is greater than my regard for an alleged friend who, through ignorance or design misrepresents in the most harmful way the cause of a long suffering race…”

rePro-Truth

'Pro-Life Feminists' — A ventriloquial poem

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