MOISES G.

SULLANO 4TH YEAR / A50N

ANTIPOLO CITY MEDICAL HOSPITAL C.I. EMILYSANOY

Abortion and Black Children

Published: Friday, February 19, 2010, 3:36 PM Updated: Friday, February 19, 2010, 4:20 PM
Source: NJ.COM

It’s one of the worst-kept secrets in the abortion “wars” – that African-American women have abortions at a rate
several times that of whites.
For those who see abortion as the taking of life, the jarring statistics (real people, of course) add up to a
continuing assault on minorities. From one point of view, the practice can be likened to a new Jim Crow.
To publicize what many pro-life and pro-choice activists already know – but many “lay” people may not be
aware of – an out-of-state pro-life organization recently began a campaign to make known this assault on
unborn black children.
As described in a wire story earlier this week in The Star-Ledger, Georgia’s statewide right-to-life organization
has publicized the disparity in abortion rates on billboards throughout Atlanta.
Provocatively, the message describes black children as an “endangered species.”
Not surprisingly, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, disparaged
the campaign.
“The language in the billboard is using messages of fear and shame to target women of color,” said Leola Reis,
a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of George, according to the Ledger’s
Associated Press story. Reis added that what is needed is better health care for women – true, but that doesn’t
really speak to the matter of sky-high abortion rates among African-American women.
(As you might guess, Reis said nothing about just how much money Planned Parenthood generates each year
as a result of those high abortion rates.)
So just how much do abortion rates differ between black and white women? Even a quick search of the
Internet yields information from sources on all sides of the political spectrum.
For example, the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, reported that 37 percent of all
abortions are performed on black women. Non-Hispanic white women, who make up a much larger portion of
the population, had 34 percent of the total number of abortions performed.
In 2006, according to a separate report issued by the institute this year, among women ages 15 to 19, the
abortion rate was 11.0 per 1,000 among non-Hispanic white women and 44.3 per 1,000 among non-Hispanic
black women.
Elsewhere, the abortion rate for black women was 2.9 times the rate for white women, according to the
Centers for Disease Control.
And according to abortionfacts.com, nearly 33,000 abortions were performed in New Jersey in 1995. Of these,
11,751 (35.7 percent) were performed on white women and 15,165 (46.0 percent) were performed on black
women.

REACTION :

Women take themselves in for an abortion. I don't agree that this is some sort of genocide. It sounds like a
total failure to use birth control. What percentage of women who have abortions (regardless of race) are
married? Married couples find raising children to be an enormous expense, and extremely tough to do with
both working. How are single women supposed to accomplish this? Who is offering to help them do it? The
real question has to do with why they aren't using birth control which is readily available and much less of a
physical and financial burden than an abortion.