In a hearing last week about racism in public school curriculum, Arizona state Rep. Walt Blackman said any “honest conversation” about America’s past of slavery and discrimination must also acknowledge the genocide of our present age: abortion.
“There are more black babies aborted than born every day,” he said.
White leftist activists constantly talk about racism, but they conveniently ignore that their sacred cow of abortion is racist to its core.
Abortion should never have become a political football. It used to be something every American, Democrat and Republican, agreed was wrong.
Democrat politician and activist Jesse Jackson is a good example. In 1975, he compared the Roe v. Wade decision to slavery: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life … That was the premise of slavery.” But after Jackson ran for the Democrat presidential nomination in 1988, he conformed to the pro-choice party line.
Since then, a tragic dissonance has ensued in the black community over party affiliation and abortion. While most black Americans (54 percent) think abortion is morally unacceptable, they are still more closely associated with the Democratic Party and its abortion-friendly platform. Many black voters find themselves out of step with Democrat candidates seeking their votes, especially on social issues, similar to blue-collar voters who feel Democrat policies have left them behind.
Democrats can easily reconcile with their voter base on this issue. Restoring respect for all life would win the hearts of many in the black community.
A recently released report from an organization we work with, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), shows the devastating effects of abortion on generations of black Americans. The report details the abortion industry’s predatory practices — how abortion providers seek out minority women, advertise directly to them, and sometimes perform illegal procedures, like the infamous late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell. This multi-billion dollar industry isn’t trying to protect anyone’s rights; it’s trying to profit off desperate women, especially black women.
In 2012, the Life Issues Institute reported that “79% of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are strategically located within walking distance of African-American and/or Hispanic communities.” In 2017, they updated these numbers to include 25 new abortion mega centers, 100 percent of which were within walking distance of minority neighborhoods. With each abortion bringing in hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on whether they are early- or late-term abortions, it’s clear that abortion providers are engaging in a grisly sort of supply-side economics.
Worse still, abortion has always been a tool of racial eugenics, the ideology that seeks to limit “undesirable” black births. Star Parker, the founder of CURE and author of the report, argues that “From its inception, the abortion industry has sought to control and hinder the growth of the Black population, a core objective of the movement’s founders.”
This is a historical fact. Margaret Sanger, the founder of abortion giant Planned Parenthood, was a racial eugenicist who was concerned that “the mass of Negroes … still breed carelessly and disastrously,” and hired black pastors lest “word go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” Many other early abortion activists, such as Hugh Moore and Edward Ross, sought to expand abortion to prevent non-white population growth. Today, there are still abortion activists who behave like the black community needs more abortions.
The politicization of abortion — an issue that is moral to its core — is a wound in our national fabric that we feel deeply and personally. One of us was born to a single mother and later adopted, but many others in the exact same situation were aborted. We work with CURE to support policies that help mothers with unplanned pregnancies avoid the grievous act of abortion. Black mothers especially face intense manipulation and pressure because of the politics of abortion.
We must restore bipartisan moral common sense and offer hope to these women. There is no hope without justice, and there’s no justice without truth. We can’t talk about racism without talking about the dark stain on our society that abortion represents. Black Americans, who suffer disproportionately from abortion, deserve equal rights, including the right to life. The unborn deserve racial justice too.
