an this plzzzhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBM89valaBI
... 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 Suburban Soulgirl on -
Well TBH, most of the black folk I know are pro-life and are not lining up to the local PP to get abortions, so I think those billboards are bollocks...(I'm pro-choice btw)
Also- Unwanted pregnancies are just a symptom of a bigger problem, such as lack of condom/birth control usage...And it leads to more serious issues than that of abortion IMO. The #1 killer of black women between the ages of 25-44 are AIDS related illnesses...Most common source of infection is heterosexual intercourse and many black women die undiagnosed. The first and foremost priority is to educate our men/women/youth about practicing safer sex.
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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on -
chelles said: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."
i laughed out loud. :]
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Permalink Reply by Stephanie Selassie on -
I knew many girls who used abortions as a form of birthcontrol,what was worse was the fact that they felt no remorse and tried to rationalize their selfish decisions by claiming that "its not a baby yet,its just a mass of cells".
Well...
what do you think we are...
Abortions should not be used as a form of birthcontrol the way that condoms,the pill,or abstinece are.
What ever happened to saving yourself for marriage?waiting to intentionally reproduce with someone who you can honestly call your soulmate?
I think it has a lot to do with the loss of self esteem in women and young girls now days.sex dosent always equal love..
more respect should be developed for ourselves and the unborn child in the process.
and yes I understand,people do get raped,its sad but true.but i think thats a whole different subject,becuase their is a difference between someone is was raped and someone who refuses to own up to the consciquences of their actions.
there should be like a 3 stikes kind of thing at the clinic or something for irresponsible girls who make the choice to have sex and not protected themselves.It seems like people have forgotten that sex is how you make other human beings and pregnancy is the result...
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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on
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Heya Stephanie, welcome to AP. :]
Re: Abortion being used as birth control way too often--I definitely agree with you but who is anyone to decide when a woman's had enough abortions and has to be "punished" with the pregnancy? I mean forced sterilization had the same mentality except they saw existing poor children as worse than abortions because they were draining society or some b.s. (and it was more economical to remove a woman's reproductive system without fully informing her what they're doing).
"I think it has a lot to do with the loss of self esteem in women and young girls now days.sex dosent always equal love...more respect should be developed for ourselves and the unborn child in the process."
heck yes, especially the emphasis on ourselves and the youth and children in our lives...born or unborn.
"yes I understand,people do get raped,its sad but true.but i think thats a whole different subject,becuase their is a difference between someone is was raped and someone who refuses to own up to the consciquences of their actions."
yeah but when our children and young women are getting raped, abused, or their sexuality is ignored -- how do you expect ppl to be not only sexually mature or sufficiently protect themselves when they potentially lost respect for themselves because their families and communities didn't give a shit about when they were raped/molested/damaged and ignored?
hmm, i suppose i ust don't think people act within a vacuum...
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Permalink Reply by Hitch on -
That message seems like it would ultimately lead to birth control being practiced more not abortion being used less. It definitely calls out a community but the numbers of black women that get abortions as compared to white I think has a lot of things to be considered with it. What about education, living conditions, availability for birth control and outreach to spread word about it. I wouldn't go so far so to include slavery as a direct factor, like the women in the video does, but I want to know what the average age is for these black women compared to other races.
To first hear about the billboard it sounds offensive but given the numbers I do like that something is being done, I'm just not sure if this is a effect means of doing it.
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Permalink Reply by Lee on -
I'm getting involved in the reproductive justice movement and just did my first volunteer shift at Feminist Women's Health Center in northern Atlanta. It's funny because I'd heard of these billboards via Spark (http://sparkrj.org/content/?page_id=4) and even during my shift, but hadn't actually seen one of the billboards. As I was coming home on the bus after volunteering, however, I saw this billboard for the first time. It's a sly ploy to try and push through legislation that would criminalize abortions if the state feels that women (in the case, Black women) have been co-erced into getting one. It's been attempted before by targeting Asian American communities (referencing supposed sex-selection abortions and Asian women being forced to have those), so this is nothing new.
What's problematic about all of this, besides the obvious, is that there is so much shame being heaped on minority women for having abortions but no attempt to address the issues behind all of the abortions taking place. It seems like with minority women, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. You're going to be shamed for making the decision to have an abortion, but you're also going to be shamed if you decide to keep the child yet have to use the state to take care of it. The state is using disenfranchised people to push their agenda and don't care that we're, essentially, pawns in their game.
This isn't an emotional issue or an issue that need to really be public domain. I don't think it really matters what we individually feel about abortion in the long run, but I do feel that everyone needs to recognize that the greatest right a person owns is the right to control their own body. If it's not something that you're doing to yourself, the details really don't matter as far as what people are going to use this for. Women who use abortion for birth control probably don't need to be having children anyway, and I trust women who have thought the choice out, decided it was the best course, and decided to go through with it.
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Permalink Reply by Rage_Proletaire on -
Utah Abortion Bill -- http://abcnews.go.com/Health/utah-abortion-bill-punishing-miscarria...
... My apologies if this is a repost.
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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on
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utah is kind of a bizarre state when it comes to children thanks to the mormons (e.g. their adoption laws encourage child trafficking)...can you imagine being charged for abusing your unborn child if you tripped and fell down some stairs...lol, horrible.
thx for the link.
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Permalink Reply by The oOohh Baby Gimme Mores on -
Cola's Response:
I'm currently in College for advertising... The ads are working... but not in a way that I think is healthy for our (The African American) community... nor do I think it's healthy for the way White people already perceive black folk.
Irresponsible. You'd expect better from supposed leaders.
The ad brings up a debate that is only applicable if accurate for the Georgia area. Targeting race to target a universal issue is racist... plain and simple.
Two thumbs down, because I don't have any more thumbs
Cola
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Permalink Reply by Lee on
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Considering how racist these ads are, I have a hard time believing that Black leaders were the originators of this campaign. The way the baby in the ad was photographed was too close to ads depicting actual endangered animals and I felt that it was equating black babies with animals. Even in the terming of the babies as "species", it was othering us in a sense. It's a subtle sense, though.
The oOohh Baby Gimme Mores said:Cola's Response:
I'm currently in College for advertising... The ads are working... but not in a way that I think is healthy for our (The African American) community... nor do I think it's healthy for the way White people already perceive black folk.
Irresponsible. You'd expect better from supposed leaders.
The ad brings up a debate that is only applicable if accurate for the Georgia area. Targeting race to target a universal issue is racist... plain and simple.
Two thumbs down, because I don't have any more thumbs
Cola
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Permalink Reply by Hitch on
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That may have been done for effect. If you're going to have a billboard saying that I'd assume your visuals would match it. I think the effort is to create a ad that dehumanizes the subject to show that the subject is being dehumanized to push abortion or black genocide as their claiming. Also racism is the point of the campaign. Of course it's racist to call out a racial group publicly but the purpose of the campaign is to call out actions that are doing the same thing...or that's what they're saying. The problem is that the campaign doesn't look at contributing factors at all. Their website has no discussion of why A has successfully lead to B, just that both are facts and the attempt is to try to show how one group is dehumanizing another group, so let's dehumanize them by using words with strong social connotations like "genocide". The fact is that the fastest and easiest way to get peoples attention is to go after their emotions, I can say this for sure about America.
Jaleesa said:Considering how racist these ads are, I have a hard time believing that Black leaders were the originators of this campaign. The way the baby in the ad was photographed was too close to ads depicting actual endangered animals and I felt that it was equating black babies with animals. Even in the terming of the babies as "species", it was othering us in a sense. It's a subtle sense, though.
The oOohh Baby Gimme Mores said:Cola's Response:
I'm currently in College for advertising... The ads are working... but not in a way that I think is healthy for our (The African American) community... nor do I think it's healthy for the way White people already perceive black folk.
Irresponsible. You'd expect better from supposed leaders.
The ad brings up a debate that is only applicable if accurate for the Georgia area. Targeting race to target a universal issue is racist... plain and simple.
Two thumbs down, because I don't have any more thumbs
Cola
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Permalink Reply by Eris on -
I actually remember seeing something quite similar on this discusions in August during the Black Expo here in Indy. On one of the pages of the program fliers there was an ad that was basically stating that if the mother of Martin Luther King Jr. had gotten an abortion, we would not be where we are today.
If there were never a louder head-desking action...
I don't know about you, but I found the ad a bit insulting considering how the FUCK do we know if Mrs. King even considered abortion and even if she did, why the hell would you use this as some sort of message for pro-choice. If anything, its invasive on the family (at least to me anyway) and as I said, who knows if this so called claim is true.
A'course, you have to realize who the ad was aimed towards and I can easily bet that the argument of 'But if you abort this baby, you may kill off the next leader of our people!1!' was often used when black women wanted to abort but...urgh, its such a touchy issue that it seems our society loves to side-step rather than consider who it really effects....and I'm not talking about God. 9_9
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