race and racism

I read this article in the New York Times yesterday. It is about how anti-choice advocates are trying to convince African Americans to be more active in the anti-choice movement. They are saying that legalized abortion is just a big conspiracy, like eugenics, to rid the United States of black people.

I had never heard that argument before. When you look at the facts, it is startling to know that 40% of women who choose to have abortions are black women, while they only make up 13% of the population. However, seeing the fact that black women seek out abortions more often than white woman, without asking why, is misleading. I do not know the statistics, but I'm pretty sure that black women have a much higher poverty rate, proportionally (I am not trying to say that there are no poor whites, because trust me, I know there are poor whites). Perhaps, black women are trying to lift themselves out of poverty and the cycle of poverty that comes from having children or having too many children and not being able to care for them. Perhaps, black women are faced, like many other women, with difficult decisions. Lack of resources is a very good reason to believe that an abortion is the only option.

If anti-choice activists really thought that there was a conspiracy to kill black babies, they might want to look at the rate of infant mortality for black babies as opposed to white babies. (based on data from the CDC, the infant mortality rate of black babies is more than double that of white babies) Or perhaps there is just a conspiracy to keep black men in jail. Maybe that is why there are so many of them there. I do think there are plausible reasons to believe that there are conspiracies to keep black people down. I don't think that abortion rights is one of them.

I do not believe that our society has overcome racism (just like I do not believe that our society has achieved equality among the sexes) but I equally do not believe that abortion rights are a place where black people are being hurt by the ability to choose.