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Black pro-lifers see abortion in racial terms

MARCUS GADSON - Indianapolis Recorder

9/14/2009 12:28:09 PM

The greatest killer in the Black community isn’t heart disease, AIDS, or cancer. Black pro-lifers say abortion is the greatest killer.

While Blacks have about 17 percent of pregnancies, they have 36 percent of abortions. Between 1973 and 2005, 17 million Black pregnancies were terminated.

Yet, Blacks are no more supportive of abortion rights than whites are and some polls have even found them to be less supportive. Several polls have found that Blacks are more likely to oppose abortion than whites.

A large number of Black pro-lifers oppose abortion based upon their religious convictions.

“I’ve been interested in life issues ever since becoming a (Christian) believer,” said Kimberly Cash Tate.

An overwhelming majority of Blacks share Tate’s faith. Blacks identify as born-again Christians at a higher rate than other ethnic groups.

Black pro-life activists see the taking of lives through abortion as a civil rights issue.

“The only blot on the fabric of America greater than slavery is abortion,” says Dr. Levon Yuille.

He reasons that aborted babies never get the chance to live, while even slaves at least had that right.

Abortion rights advocates often argue that forcing a woman who doesn’t want a baby to carry a pregnancy to term unfairly deprives them of a choice.

But Yuille says that choosing whether to carry a pregnancy to term isn’t like choosing the color on a car, or what to eat for dinner. The idea of a woman aborting a child because it is inconvenient is one that Yuille finds morally repugnant.

Several Black pro-lifers also think that abortion hurts the pregnant woman.

Reverend Clenard Childress of Black Genocide.com says that abortion “has unquestionably invoked a scourge of health problems for African-American women disproportionately.”

Given the high abortion rate in the Black community, some Black pro-lifers see legalized abortion as a plot to hurt the Black race.

“Many believe that at its founding, Planned Parenthood had a goal of eliminating those in society who Margaret Sanger deemed useless, among them Black people. So many today hold the theory that that is why Planned Parenthood carried out that goal of getting in disadvantaged communities,” said Tate.

The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger has been accused of promoting eugenics. In 1939, Sanger worked on the “Negro project.” She promoted birth control to try and limit the number of Blacks born.

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she wrote in a memorandum.

Perhaps most surprising for Black pro-lifers is the fact that much of the Black political establishment, is strongly pro-choice.

“It is a great irony that a Black president would have such a pro-abortion record,” said Childress. Since Blacks have been discriminated against and enslaved, he feels they should sympathize with the plight of a fetus denied personhood.

Yuille agrees.

“The Black congressional caucus, the NAACP, and Barack Obama are part and parcel of promoting the genocide of their own race,” he said.

Whatever abortion’s legal status now, Black pro-lifers will continue to work towards outlawing abortion.

“An unjust law is no law at all,” said Childress.

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