The black family in the U.S. has been a target for ill-treatment for centuries. In the 18th and 19th century when slavery was legal, the slave owner could cruelly sell individual members of a black family for his financial benefit without the slightest consideration for the family’s deep emotional ties to one another. A family member who was sold was never seen again.
Cruelty to black families continues today as black American mothers are targeted for abortions.
In 2014, 36% of all U.S. surgical abortions were performed on black women, whereas black Americans comprise only about 13% of the U.S. population. This situation is particularly disturbing in the state of Mississippi where 72% of all abortions are performed on black women, even though African-Americans comprise only 34.7% of the population in that state. The abortion rate in blacks is 4.3 times higher than for non-blacks. The U.S. has lost more than 19 million black American babies to abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973 of Roe v. Wade.
This is not just a tragedy for the mother and the unborn child, but also for children born to the mother subsequent to that abortion. This is because surgical abortions increase the risk of premature birth and low birth weight in future pregnancies. This is especially the case for abortions that occur after 12 weeks of pregnancy. The risk of future premature birth and low birth weight was higher among women who had abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Women who had abortions earlier in their pregnancy also showed an increased risk of premature births, when compared to women who had never had an abortion.
Abortion can lead to an incompetent cervix, which is an indication of higher risk. The risk factors include low birth weight, internal infection, and Cerebral Palsy for the child. Other risk factors include respiratory distress, gastrointestinal injury, autism and mental disabilities.
It is heart breaking that American black mothers have been targeted by Planned Parenthood. Nearly 80% of Planned Parenthood clinics are located in black and Hispanic communities today. This is no accident. In 1916, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood and the virulently racist American Eugenics Society. Sanger stated, in 1923, that birth control does not mean “contraception indiscriminately practiced”, but instead, the elimination of defective “human weeds”. Sanger also voiced support for the sterilization of those with mental disability and stated in a 1923 article published in The Thinker, “a better birth control must be devised to eliminate the degenerate and the defective.” In 1938, Sanger addressed members of the white supremacist, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic organization, the Ku Klux Klan. Although she may not have supported the organization, she stated, “any aroused group was a good group”. The totality of her writings and social activism were steeped in eugenic elitism and racism. She also started a program called “The Negro Project” in 1939, stating: “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population”. She believed that the increasing number of poor blacks in the U.S. could be prevented by way of encouraging birth control for black women. Planned Parenthood today has not departed far from its roots.
Planned Parenthood has a staunch supporter in U.S. Supreme Court Judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who strongly agrees with the Roe vs Wade decision, which was laced with ideals for population control. Ginsburg stated, in a New York Times interview (July 7, 2009), “frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth…in population[s] that we don’t want to have too many of”. In Elle magazine (Sept 23, 2014) Ginsburg insinuated that women of means have access to abortion and that poor people must also have ready access to abortions because “it makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people”. She thought that these poor people whose background and living standards may not be up to her expectations, should be permitted and encouraged to abort their babies too.
Although abortion advocates state that abortion is all about “women’s rights”, it is really about controlling the population of those “we don’t want too many of”, as stated by Ginsburg.
Today, the slowest growing ethnic group in the U.S. is African American. Margaret Sanger would be pleased.