Blacks and the Abortion Issue

By Leland C. Abraham, Esq.

A central issue in the last presidential election, and one that still grips the conscience of this nation is the issue of abortion. For some, abortion is the systematic killing of young ones that have the potential to be productive citizens. For others, abortion, however unfortunate, is a necessary means. A question that has always intrigued me is, “Where do black people stand on the issue of abortion?”

Abortion was popularized by the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. This pivotal case was decided in 1973. According to the most conservative estimates, some 14 million black babies have been aborted since 1973. This is an average of roughly 1,400 black babies aborted per day. This makes the Black population the proportionate leader in this category. Planned Parenthood, the major promoter of the choice for abortion, is primarily located in predominately black and Latino neighborhoods. According to blackgenocide.com, the origins of Planned Parenthood are steeped in the systematic destruction of a generation of black people. According to the site, Margaret Sanger aligned herself with eugenics in the early 1900s. Eugenics was an ideology that espoused racial supremacy and “purity” of the “Aryan” race. By 1939, Sanger created the “Negro Project” in which she sought to decrease the number of “lower class and barbarous” blacks. She opened her clinic in Harlem and sought to spread her message by speaking to community leaders and black churches. In reference to her speaking at black churches, Sanger wrote: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members” [emphasis added]. Sanger was successful in recruiting many influential black leaders to her new form of “birth control.”

Here we are, some 70 years after the start of the “Negro Project” and the effects are still seen in the black community. In assessing the black community’s stance on the abortion issue, I first wanted to know what Roe v. Wade specifically allowed for. The case concerned a woman who was raped and became pregnant as a result of the rape. By the time the US Supreme Court decided the case, the woman had given birth to the child, so the case was moot. Generally, the Supreme Court does not decide cases that are moot, however, the Court stated that this particular case was “capable or repetition yet evading review” so it decided to hear the case. What the court decided was that a woman had the right to have an abortion from the point of conception to the point of viability. This meant, as long as the fetus couldn’t survive outside the womb, the mother has the right to an abortion. Because the Supreme Court justices were not doctors, they arbitrarily came up with 28 weeks for the time of viability. This is roughly 7 months. So, a woman could have an abortion within the first 7 months of pregnancy according to the nation’s highest Court. Because the Supreme Court is not a law making entity, it could only give parameters as for the time, but it could not make a rule concerning illegality. Thus, while it was acceptable for a woman to have an abortion at 7 months, it wasn’t necessarily illegal to have an abortion after 7 months. Not until, Congress passed the “Partial-Birth” abortion ban. While the law of Roe v. Wade has been challenged several times, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to change the precedent set some 36 years ago.

So where is the black community on this issue? What is the proper measure for judging the black community’s stance on such a controversial topic? If voting patterns are the measure, the evidence would suggest that blacks are overwhelmingly supportive of abortion. Blacks generally support democratic candidates and the democratic platform usually supports that right of the woman to seek an abortion. However, the Prop. 8 issue in California has taught us that we cannot look strictly at voting records alone (Blacks in California overwhelmingly voted for a ban on same-sex marriage while overwhelmingly voting for the democratic presidential candidate). Is the media the proper measuring stick for the black response to abortion? Pro-Life rallies are organized all across the nation and usually what makes the news are the white advocates for the ending of abortion. In fact, the media rarely uses a black face to promote the pro-life cause. This does not mean that black people do not attend these events. In fact, in the pro-life rally on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2008, several black leaders were present. Notable attendees were Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Jesse Lee Petersen, a prominent black pastor in the Los Angeles area. Noticeably absent were CNN, Fox and ABC news.

And what of the new president? His voting record prior to taking office strongly suggests that he is extremely liberal on the issue of abortion. While still a supporter of the woman’s right to choose, Obama was recently quoted as saying, “Our aim has to be reducing the number of women who are seeking abortions.”

While it is good that we have been given our constitutional right to privacy, the black community has to become aware of the history of the abortion movement. The locations of the Planned Parenthood clinics are also indicators of the continued efforts of the “Negro Project” to have a lasting effect on the black community.

The solution to such a problem is not easy. It is an easy notion to simply say stop having abortions, but the fact is that most young women seeking abortions do not have the financial means to raise a child which is why they are seeking abortions. The follow-up to this argument would naturally be, “just put the baby up for adoption, but don’t kill it.” Again, an easy sentiment until you look at the statistics and discover that kids are not being adopted at a high rate. The adoption rate significantly declines for black kids. So what do we do? My mother was a child of the 60s and one of her biggest complaints about the state of black America today versus what is was like when she grew up is the lack of the sense of community. She always says that back in the 60s, the whole neighborhood would raise the kid. Today, there seems to be a lack of this type of community “raising” of children. Whatever the solution, the black community needs to discover it. According to the last decade of statistical data, blacks are the only people in the earth who are decreasing at an increasing rate.

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