Earlier this year, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that he wouldn’t be listening to the Black community’s pleas for racial justice until they did something about their astronomically high abortion rates.
Currently, according to the Guttmacher Institute and others, Black women are aborting at nearly three times the rate of whites. Because my friend is conservative, and because to him a human fetus is a human being, there’s no sense in talking about anything else while this particular community seems to care so little for their own.
Right or wrong, this is a common narrative in conservative media, and for those whose information diet leans heavily to the right.
Another friend recently filled me in on the idea that Planned Parenthood — frequently supported by liberals in the US — is specifically targeting the Black community and is part of the reason why Black abortion rates are so high.
To these two friends, and many, many others, the question is this: if liberals are so concerned about justice and equity for Blacks in America, why do they turn a blind eye to such astronomically high abortion rates within this community, and/or support an organization with an equally abhorrent posture?
The answer: to liberals, Black lives actually don’t matter.
Before I torture you with my opinion, I’ll point out that this particular narrative has a few holes in it. There’s significant data at our fingertips that paints a completely different picture, data that my conservative friends haven’t seemed to access yet.
And I’ll say this a million times, my stories have holes too, and my data diet leans significantly in the other direction. Just because I’m pointing out the holes in your story doesn’t mean I consider mine to be bullet proof.
“Black People Don’t Care”
Abortion rates aren’t just disproportional among Blacks, they’re disproportional among people who live at or near the poverty line, and there are a lot of Black women living at or near the poverty line. Currently, poverty rates among Blacks are nearly three times that of whites, and because women in general are more likely to live below the poverty line than men, you can bet that there are more Black women living at or near the poverty line than white women, easily up to three times more.
But why trust the Guttmacher Institute? Simple. Their data is referenced by media outlets and others who want us to believe that Black people don’t care about their babies. The Guttmacher Institute is cited over and over again by conservative media outlets reporting on abortion.
So why is the income side of the story so often missing? You certainly won’t find it at Fox, Brietbart, The Federalist, Washington Examiner, Red State, et al.
It’s in your face on Guttmacher’s site.
I’m not trying to convince you to think like I do. I’m simply asking, why is this side of the story completely absent from conservative abortion narrative? You could ask me something similar but but I’ll confess that my trusted media sources, and yours, rarely serve the whole pie. What self-respecting waiter would serve his customer something they don’t want to eat?
“Adolf Jr.”
There are also a couple of holes in the idea that Planned Parenthood has specifically targeted the Black community.
I get it: the founder of PPH had some pretty strong allegiances to eugenics — “the science of improving humanity to give the more suitable people a better chance of prevailing” — to the point where she’s been accused of affirming some of Hitler’s ideas. But she wasn’t alone. A lot of well-loved historical figures got sucked into the eugenics current: Thedore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Plato. Even the Kellog’s cereal guy believed that whites should protect their superior gene pool from non-whites by sexually distancing themselves.
Ever had a bowl of Corn Flakes? Are the people who made them eugenecists? Probably not. That was a long time ago. But if you want me to believe that they are, you’d have to show me some supporting data. Otherwise, I’ll assume that brand of stupidity weeded itself out many years ago, as it has for Planned Parenthood. It’s been a very long time since someone from that organization made a statement that remotely smacks of the idea that “lesser” people should be terminated, sterilized, segregated, aborted, etc.
In addition, the majority of PPH installations exist in majority-white neighborhoods, and only 14% of PPH abortions (roughly the Black population in the US) are performed on Black moms. I’m not seeing any data to support the idea that PPH has embraced some genocidal, racist agenda.
In general, I reject the idea that Black abortion rates are the result of poor choices, immorality in the Black community, or some Hitler-like agenda at Planned Parenthood. However, in the absence of critical data, with the addition of certain cultural facets, I understand how so many have gotten suckered in.
As you can guess, I reject the idea that these statistics disqualify the Black community from any and all justice initiatives. It is the sheer lack of these initiatives that have resulted in higher abortion rates. Put any demographic under the same weight and watch how things change. Who would argue that increased social, financial and emotional pressure would complicate the issue of unintended pregnancy and how one should move forward.
The Guttmacher institute certainly isn’t arguing.
In American history, where justice, equity, and equality for Blacks was in order, you’ll see many whites in America — especially white Christians — excusing themselves from the realities of injustice. Should it surprise us that the same thing is happening today? We’re desperate to tell our Black brothers and sisters to shut the hell up and make better choices so we can get back to our Tex-Mex and Bible studies, clawing for whatever hall pass we might find.
Ultimately, there is no precedent in our country for Black voices calling for racial justice where a need for racial justice didn’t exist.
There is only precedent for the opposite.
Photo Credit: Ivan Aleksic at Unsplash
