What we missed in the uproar over whether abortions 'snuff out' Black people
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Reporters in search of statistics on abortion have relied for decades on the Guttmacher Institute. So, it’s likely that Big Media would have high confidence the following Guttmacher statement is true:
“The abortion rate for Black women is almost five times that for white women.”
Given that Guttmacher is unabashedly pro-abortion rights, there would be no reason for the organization to embellish these numbers.
I assume they are every bit as real as they are disturbing.
In Arizona, Black women got 13% of the abortions and their abortion rate was nearly 2.5 times higher than white women, according to Arizona Department of Health data. In Texas, the Black abortion rate is five to six times those of white Texans and double those of Hispanic Texans, the Texas Tribune reports.
The American left has long argued that we need to confront hard facts about race and American society. Well, here’s a hard fact:
Legalized abortion, for whatever reason, is inordinately suppressing African American population growth in this country by the tens of millions. Probably more.
This isn't an argument against abortion
In the compounding math of human reproduction, the numbers of unlived Black lives due to abortion are probably astronomical. An individual fetus not brought to term represents a human life that will not go on to have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Over the 50-year life of Roe v. Wade that would amount to enormous political, financial and social clout unrealized.
This cannot be healthy for American society.
Mine is not an argument to ban abortion. I believe we have reached consensus in America that abortion should be safe and legal and regulated. Conservatives do not have the votes to fully outlaw abortion, so they must work in other ways to limit its excesses, to make abortion what Democrats not so long ago said it should be -- rare.
Right-wing politicians who do not wise up to the nationwide consensus for legalized abortion will feel its influence through the hard math of lost elections. In relatively short order all states will reflect that broad view, though it may take a few election cycles for Sunbelt states to catch up.
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Mine is an argument that we need the freedom, the social license, to talk about difficult issues such as this one.
Planned Parenthood disavowed its racist beginning
Walt Blackman, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives and a Republican candidate for the 2nd Congressional District in the northeastern part of the state, has raised this issue and now is bearing the backlash.
Standing with other Republican leaders, he contended that the high rate of abortion in the African American community is part of a strategy to “snuff out” Black people. He further argued that the founders of the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood, namely Margaret Sanger, were intentionally working to restrain Black population growth.
There is little question about the racist founding of Planned Parenthood. That debate ended in 2020, when Planned Parenthood’s New York office disavowed Sanger and began the process of removing her name from its Manhattan health clinic because of her “harmful connections to the eugenics movement.”
Eugenics, a Greek word for “good birth or stock,” helped inform the twisted racial theories of the Nazi Reich and social engineering in the United States and Western Europe, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Members of the eugenic community in Germany and the US ... viewed the racially ‘inferior’ and poor as dangerous. Eugenicists maintained that such groups were tainted by deficiencies they inherited. They believed that these groups endangered the national community and financially burdened society.”
Had Blackman wanted to bolster this point, he could have quoted from today’s Planned Parenthood website:
“Margaret Sanger was so intent on her mission to advocate for birth control that she chose to align herself with ideologies and organizations that were explicitly ableist and white supremacist. In doing so, she undermined reproductive freedom and caused irreparable damage to the health and lives of generations of Black people, Latino people, Indigenous people, immigrants, people with disabilities, people with low incomes, and many others.”
Sanger and other eugenicists “endorsed the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that states could forcibly sterilize people deemed ‘unfit’ without their consent and sometimes without their knowledge. The acceptance of this decision by Sanger and other thought leaders laid the foundation for tens of thousands of people to be sterilized, often against their will,” the Planned Parenthood website recounts.
Blackman's main point is dispelled
But such statements also dispel Blackman’s other major point that Planned Parenthood is behind a continuing conspiracy to wipe out the Black population. That is preposterous and without proof. And it is unlikely an organization dedicated to Black destruction could put out a statement such as Planned Parenthood did disowning its founder.
Planned Parenthood’s continued success depends largely upon Democratic politicians who are no doubt committed to improving the lives of all minorities. I don’t believe today’s Planned Parenthood is racist.
Further proof is Brittany Fonteno, a woman of color who helms Planned Parenthood Arizona. She pushed back on Blackman’s accusation in a written statement:
“(It is) insulting and degrading for any person – and especially for any pundit or politician – to suggest that Black folks, Latinos, and any other communities of color are unable to make the best health care decisions for themselves and their families.”
That’s a great quote, because it establishes agency for Black and other minority women in Arizona to make their own decisions.
School choice proponents would be wise to seize upon it the next time the social justice crowd is blocking choice in public education.
It’s empowering.
But the experts also contradict themselves
It would also seem to contradict the experts in our Arizona Republic story.
“Claims that higher abortion rates among women of color are rooted in racism are not new,” The Republic reported. “The theory has been circulating for years and has been promoted by some prominent Black conservatives.”
“...The claims have been widely debunked by experts who attribute disproportionately higher abortion rates among women of color, particularly Black and Latina women, to disproportionately higher rates of unintended pregnancies because of inequitable access to effective birth control and sex education.”
I’m tempted to push back against the experts. An abortion can cost anywhere from $300 to $5,000 depending on the trimester, as explained by the Rockville Women’s Center in Rockville, Md.
One abortion could theoretically pay for a decade of birth control.
Further, “inequitable access” is a social-justice argument about systemic racism. If that’s true, it makes the case that the Black abortion rate is, in fact, “rooted in racism.”
Fonteno picks up the same theme and seems to argue with herself:
“Due to centuries of systemic racism, discrimination, and bias – even within the health care system – Black communities often face worse health outcomes, including sexual and reproductive health outcomes.”
The wider discussion we should be having
So, which is it?
“Worse health outcomes” due to “centuries of systemic racism?” Or “communities of color” making “the best health care decisions for themselves and their families?”
Perhaps she can amplify upon that.
A bigger discussion needs to be had. Is the aborting of Black lives in the womb at five times the rate of the majority population a positive good or an undeniable bad?
How can the stunting of Black population growth at such a high rate be healthy for our society?
Maybe Planned Parenthood could atone for its past by leading the discussion.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Abortions don't 'snuff out' Black people. They don't help them, either
