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By Kody Fairfield

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dr. Willie Parker, an abortion provider and the board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health, said that he wants to take the moral high ground back from the pro-life movement, reports the Blaze.

In his new book, “Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice,” Parker wrote that he decided to become an abortion provider to “exercise Christian compassion not by proxy, but with my own capable hands.”

The Blaze says that Parker told Rolling Stone that Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermon, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” influenced his decision to perform abortions.

“That sermon by Dr. King was instrumental in me examining my role in addressing injustice and oppression,” he said, noting that, in addition to King, the writings of Malcolm X influenced his choice.

“Their sense of work is from a deep place of humanity and wanting for others what you want for yourself,” Parker said. “The courage that’s necessary to assert yourself on behalf of human dignity, they modeled that for me, despite risk.”

Parker called the narrative of the pro-life movement “patently false” about abortion, says the Blaze, telling Rolling Stone that he details what happens in an abortion procedure in the book.

“I think we’ve empowered people opposed to abortion by being mute or defensive about the biological realities of pregnancy termination,” he said.

Parker, when asked about his views on Roe V. Wade, said that conservatives have embraced a “long-term strategy” to combat it, according to the Blaze.

“Those opposed to abortion came to understand what liberals don’t understand: that a sustained political engagement at every level was critical to them shifting the ground,” Parker said. “Conservative folk don’t vote every four years — they vote in every political cycle.”

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