... the other Black experience
race and abortion
http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/18280291
ATLANTA – The message on dozens of billboards across the city is provocative: Black children are an "endangered species."
The eyebrow-raising ads featuring a young black child are an effort by the anti-abortion movement to use race to rally support within the black community. The reaction from black leaders has been mixed, but the "Too Many Aborted" campaign, which so far is unique to onlyGeorgia, is drawing support from other anti-abortion groups across the country.
"It's ingenious," said the Rev. Johnny Hunter, national director of the Life Education and Resource Network, a North Carolina-based anti-abortion group aimed at African-Americans that operates in 27 states. "This campaign is in your face, and nobody can ignore it."
The billboards went up last week in Atlanta and urge black women to "get outraged."
The effort is sponsored by Georgia Right to Life, which also is pushing legislation that aims to ban abortions based on race.
Black women accounted for the majority of abortions in Georgia in 2006, even though blacks make up just a third of state population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nationally, black women were more than three times as likely to get an abortion in 2006 compared with white women, according to the CDC.
"I think it's necessary," Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue, said of the billboard campaign. "Abortion in the black community is at epidemic proportions. They're not really aware of what's actually going on. If it shocks people ... it should be shocking."
Anti-abortion advocates say the procedure has always been linked to race. They claim Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to eradicate minorities by putting birth control clinics in their neighborhoods, a charge Planned Parenthood denies.
"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 Georgia. "If we want to reduce the number of abortions and unintended pregnancies, we need to work as a community to make sure we get quality affordable health careservices to as many women and men as possible."
In 2008, Issues4Life, a California-based group working to end abortion in the black community, lobbied Congress to stop funding Planned Parenthood, calling black abortions "the Darfur of America."
Pro-Life Action League Executive Director Eric Scheidler said a race-based strategy for anti-abortion activists has gotten a fresh zeal, especially in the wake of the historic election of the country's first black president, Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights.
"He's really out of step with the rest of black America," Scheidler said. "That might be part of what may be shifting here and why a campaign like this is appropriate, to kind of wake up that disconnect."
Abortion rights advocates are disturbed. Spelman College professor Beverly Guy-Sheftall called the strategy a gimmick.
"To use racist arguments to try to bait black people to get them to be anti-abortion is just disgusting," said Guy-Sheftall, who teaches women's history and feminist thought at the historically black women's college.
"These one-issue approaches that are not about saving the black family or black children, it's just a big distraction," she said. "Many black people don't know who Margaret Sanger is and could care less."
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On the Net:
Too Many Aborted: http://www.toomanyaborted.com
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by CocoaPuss Zine on -
i'm 100% pro-choice, but this is all very interesting. thoughts? opinions? anyone live in ATL and have seen these billboards?
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Permalink Reply by Compound Egret on -
Thanks for posting this, CPZ.
I think it's a short sighted ploy by people who are focused on ONE issue. Are any of the peeps behind the billboards going to help feed, clothe, and raise those kids?
I was surprised by the disparate abortion numbers, but the real "endangered species" is the Black nuclear family.
Sanger may have been a racist, but family planning, birth control, and before that self control aren't counterproductive.
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Permalink Reply by Rage_Proletaire on -
Compound Egret said:... Are any of the peeps behind the billboards going to help feed, clothe, and raise those kids?
The answer to that question is usually what pisses me off when people call it "infanticide."
I expect to hear no grief from pro-lifers about welfare (or hypothetical increases in welfare "benefits" to offset the population boom), but I know I ask for too much.
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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on -
Wheredawhitewomenat said:
Catholic charities run plenty of troubled youth homes and shelters for pregnant women or women w/ children... abortion has been a Catholic issue for a long time--long before the WASP Christian right jumped on it after they lost the war on civil rights, so I believe Catholics' sincerity versus the Christian Right in favor of installing a Christian Theocracy fronts like Focus on the Family or Operation Rescue.That and if the Religious right is sooooooooooooo in favor of adoption I'd like to know why there leaders don't have ANY black children living in their homes.
It's too bad though that these Operation Rescue/Focus on the Family people can't spend all of that time and money on social programs that make a big difference (the kind wdwwa saw in Spurlock's movie)... or that they just can't get past that people have sex and unintended pregnancies.
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Permalink Reply by kifaru on -
Well we should not get too emotional and at least ask ourselves if this is really a problem and does out community stand to gain from these abortions. I have always wondered why african americans were supposed to have such high pregnancy rates but we stayed so low in population. In any event I do not think we need to conflate a woman's right to abortion with and epedimic of abortion. My question would be why are there so many unwanted pregnancies in Georgia?
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Permalink Reply by Afro-Punk on -
Wow, this raises so many questions.
Loretta Ross (executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective in Atlanta) told The New York Times that "The reason we have so many Planned Parenthoods in the black community is because leaders in the black community in the ’20s and ’30s went to Margaret Sanger and asked for them. Controlling our fertility was part of our uplift out of poverty strategy, and it still works.” Do you guys feel that abortion is a necessary community provided service?
What about the increasing rate of abortions? Is it a sign of empowerment for black men and women, or do you see it as something that is specifically targeting the Black community, as suggested in the campaign?
Is this campaign just about pushing a certain agenda, or is it really about protecting our communities?
For those who haven't seen it:
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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on
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what's empowering about unintentionally getting pregnant and then going through a horrible procedure to get rid of a distinct human life?
imo, abortion > should < be seen as a really sad thing that shouldn't be common place.
tbh as in many other threads about how royally screwed the black community is in terms of community health--i think the real problem comes from not valuing people, especially women and girls. i'm sure we all know horror stories about youth being molested, repeatedly pregnant and getting abortions w/o really understanding wtf is going on, and the fact that there's so much silence around rape. but whatever... i'unno, so many things are fucked up can't just focus on one very specific effect of everything being so wrong.
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Permalink Reply by Civilized Radical Films on -
This is my stance on abortion.
I'm against a group of men deciding what a woman should do with her body.
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Permalink Reply by Q.A.Bradford on
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i agree. this all points to the fact that black adults have to get our shit together and be more socially responsible. otherwise we get non-blacks and sangerists attempting to manage us. theres no reason why a black woman should get unintentionally pregnant unless her black partner and community too are 'unintentional' people--i.e. biased and irresponsible.
reform, integration and more participation in african-american institutions is the only answer. in those places are the heart of obs, education and welfare for black people. but if they stay stupid, we all do and were stuck with foreigners managing us.
LesYpersound said:what's empowering about unintentionally getting pregnant and then going through a horrible procedure to get rid of a distinct human life?
imo, abortion > should < be seen as a really sad thing that shouldn't be common place.
tbh as in many other threads about how royally screwed the black community is in terms of community health--i think the real problem comes from not valuing people, especially women and girls. i'm sure we all know horror stories about youth being molested, repeatedly pregnant and getting abortions w/o really understanding wtf is going on, and the fact that there's so much silence around rape. but whatever... i'unno, so many things are fucked up can't just focus on one very specific effect of everything being so wrong.
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Permalink Reply by Q.A.Bradford on
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i don't like abortions, i like unintentional pregnancies even less. use the pill bitch; be a fag, nigga. whatever you do, don't fuck it up for all of us.
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Permalink Reply by Obsidian on -
If only it were ever that simple.
Being young and the ignorant and irresponsible behaviours that go with it happens
Getting raped happens
Making plans for a child only to watch your signif other leave you happens
Shoot, even being forced to get pregnant happens (which falls under getting raped)
I am against powerless pregnancies, as if a female's body is not hers anymore when she's pregnant. I am very much for thoughtful and responsible abortions and avoiding unintentional pregnancies. I am also for humans having the right to responsible parents who love them and a secure childhood; which is why I feel it is the most irresponsible ones really should have access to easy abortions, even if it seems like they are abusing it. I am for options as things are never so simple, cut and paste.
I feel both sides of the issue are flawed. Using emotional triggers to achieve political goals is a low blow, especially when using non factual statements. On the other side, I feel the whole modern abortion process is very crude, not to mention the origins of groups like planned parenthood are less than stellar. So now you have modern groups using historical claims to bolster their support when they really don't care their target; and the abortion circuit favoring wholesale fetus removal (for a buck) instead of providing other social options (heck even access to better forms of birth control for the female; or finally developing that damned male birth control pill). But I see both on the same wavelength, not at opposite ends; just easy solutions to an issue that should be handled a lot better.
Looking at this issue as a female, it makes me feel like I should be ashamed that I'm not out there ensuring that black children don't become extinct. It is ridiculous and utterly irresponsible because people will buy into this crap. I remember sex ed and the horror they instilled in me as a teen to never get pregnant or your life will be ruined and forgetting to tell exactly when would be a good time to have a baby. Or the feeling I get from other people when they see me holding a child or infant despite being in my mid twenties ("how could you be so irresponsible" they glare). Society hates young black mothers (so it's okay to have a baby when I'm at the "mammy stage" of my life). And now I see campaigns like this. It renders one in half which lets me know this is strictly "button pushing" politics. Don't abort, just abstain harder young negro adults because despite what the billboard says, we really really don't want you to start popping out those babies, we just want you to agree with us.
A. Matsimela said:i don't like abortions, i like unintentional pregnancies even less. use the pill bitch; be a fag, nigga. whatever you do, don't fuck it up for all of us.
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Permalink Reply by chelles on -
the article is interesting. i have no idea about atl, but i know there is NO shortage in black children, or welfare for that matter in los angeles, california.
someone should come here and post a bulletin that reads "black parents are an endangered species" or "give a fuck about your kids, they can't watch themselves."
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