Speaking at a predominantly black church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said Planned Parenthood tried to commit genocide on African Americans through abortion, a claim often made by some conservative Christians.
He also said race and skin color are simply about genetics, much like how people have different-looking earlobes, according to audio and video of the speech.
Forest, a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor, spoke during a MLK Day breakfast at the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh.
"There is no doubt that when Planned Parenthood was created, it was created to destroy the entire black race," he said in a video of the speech shared on Facebook. "That was the purpose of Planned Parenthood. That's the truth.
"How the black community can't come together and see that and understand the fight against that, I don't know," he said. How the white community can't come together and see that and fight against it, I don't know either."
Forest stuck by his comments on Planned Parenthood in a statement to McClatchy News.
"The facts speak for themselves. Since 1973, 19 million black babies have been aborted, mostly by Planned Parenthood. I care too much about the lives of these babies to debate the intent of (Margaret) Sanger's views when the devastation she brought into this world is obvious."
Sanger was one of the founders of the organization that would become Planned Parenthood. Sanger believed in eugenics, according to an NPR fact check after now-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson made similar comments in 2015.
"That Sanger was enamored and supported some eugenicists' ideas is certainly true," Susan Reverby, a historian at Wellesley College, told NPR.
"But, Reverby added, Sanger's main argument was not eugenics _ it was that 'Sanger thought people should have the children they wanted,'" NPR reported.
The Raleigh-Apex Branch of the NAACP urged Forest in a statement to read "Family Planning _ A Special and Urgent Concern." It's a speech written by Martin Luther King Jr., when he was awarded the Margaret Sanger award in 1966.
"The NAACP recognizes Planned Parenthood's work in providing invaluable health screenings to lower income Americans, especially while healthcare is expensive in NC without Medicaid expansion," the organization said.
In a recording of Forest's 10-minute speech, published by Slate, he also spoke of his teenage daughter's recent science project.
"She's doing this genetic study trying to figure out dominant genes versus recessive genes and how they played out in the family," he said in the recording.
"It got me thinking: When we think about things like skin color, what we're talking about is dominant and recessive genes. That's what got this battle over civil rights, this fight that Martin Luther King was fighting was ultimately about."
Forest posed a question to the attendees: Would they go to a church based on whether they had attached or detached earlobes, a trait determined by genetics?
"It's important to remember that God did not create a black man and a white man and a brown man. He created Adam and Eve. He created a genetic code within Adam and Eve that gave the possibility for all the colors that we have now within humanity. That's what he created. I believe that within Adam and Eve's family, you saw white children and black children and brown children and everything in between," he said.
