What About Black Abortion? (Excerpt)
By Theon E. Hill and Nicole Miller for Faithfully Magazine, January 18, 2019
Today marks the 46th annual March for Life, an event started in 1974 to call for the immediate end of legal abortion. The march functions as the marquee event of the American pro-life movement, one that exercises considerable power and influence in American culture. It defines elections, shapes public policy, and informs judicial nominations. Organizations like the National Right to Life and Family Research Council pour countless dollars into advocacy efforts. Despite its powerful public presence, the movement remains woefully ineffective with the community boasting the highest abortion rates: the Black community.
Although comprising only 13.4 percent of the U.S. population, African Americans account for an estimated 36 percent of all abortions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These stark disparities suggest considerable variance along racial lines in attitudes toward abortion. However, a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center found remarkable consistency in attitudes toward abortion across racial lines, suggesting that attitude may not be the determining factor in this disparity.
Given its strong Evangelical ties, the pro-life movement’s inability to connect with the Black community is both curious and ironic, especially considering that African Americans hold the distinction of being the most religious demographic in America.
Historically, African-American civil rights icons championed the cause of the unborn. Long before abortion defined the political platform of the Religious Right, prominent African Americans in the Catholic Church, Progressive National Baptist Convention, Nation of Islam, and Black Panther Party denounced the procedure as Black genocide. For example, a 1973 article in the Black Panther Party’s newspaper argued:
“The abortion law hides behind the guise of helping women when in reality it will attempt to destroy our people. How long do you think it will take for voluntary abortions to turn into involuntary abortion, into compulsory sterilization? Black people are aware that laws made supposedly to ensure our well-being are often put into practice in such a way that they ensure our deaths.”
Black support for the pro-life movement originated with the belief that America devalued Black lives. Leaders argued that it was impossible to address abortion without addressing the social inequalities that lend themselves to high abortion rates. As Jorja English (Palmer) argued in a 1973 issue of Jet magazine:
“Any form of Black leadership that speaks to just one side of this double-edged sword [abortion] without attempting to resolve the issues that make this such an ominous problem, is simply contributing to the age-old factor which has kept us immobilized as a power-seeking entity. When we rectify imbalances in the quality of life, we will eradicate problems that pertain to the quantity of life.”
The community embraced the cause of the unborn alongside issues like poverty, racial discrimination, and education disparities. This approach was not unique to the Black community.
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