Abortion and Racism

Cry the Beloved Country

There is a new billboard campaign in the US which draws lines of connection between racism and abortion. It hyperbolically asserts that abortion is so disproportionately high amongst black women in Georgia that black children risk becoming an endangered species. The new campaign has drawn the attention of the NY Times and the LA Times.

The statistical data on how abortion is disproportionately decimating black America is disturbing. In her 2006 book The Politics of Abortion sociologist Anne Hendershott writes that “the statistics on race and abortion are indeed a concern for anyone who cares about the African American community.”

According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than 43 percent of all African American pregnancies end in abortion. Since 1973, the number of abortions by African American women has totaled nearly twelve million. Every day in the United States, more than 1,500 African American women choose to end their pregnancy through abortion. Although African Americans represent only 12 percent of the American population, they account for more than 35 percent of all abortions. As a result, the abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 per year) for African American women is 2.9 times that of white women. Put another way, for every 1,000 African American women, 32 have abortion, as compared with 11 for every 1,000 white women. Comparing the number of abortions per 1,000 live births by race, we find that the abortion/birth ration for white women is 184 abortions per 1,000 live births; for African American women, it is 543 abortions per 1,000 births. (pp. 31-32)

(Hat Tip: Justin Taylor)

It is clear that historically the eugenicists targeted blacks in the United States. Regardless of the predominant intent now, the actual effect is clear: blacks are killing their children off far more than other racial groups.

We believe this will have far more to do with an underclass mentality that consigns people to poverty, living for the moment, family breakdown, social disintegration, and self-gratification. Race has nothing to do with it. In other words, the causal link is as follows: blacks in the United States are disproportionately represented amongst the socio-economic underclass and therefore disproportionately abort their own children.

But welfare policies and provision of abortion services only make the matter far, far worse. They serve to lock-in the attitudes and world-view of the underclass. The underclass is characterised above all else by an attitude of living for the present and an absence of future orientation. Abortion is an act of ultimate self-gratification, and a denial of one's duty to live for the sake of the future.