Blacks and Abortion

I found this little something-or-other via Real Clear Politics under the title "How Obama lets us down on abortion" or somesuch. The real name of the article is "The Impact of Abortion on African Americans". It is, quite simply, a black-solidarity call to oppose abortion. Unabashedly pro-life, it does not descent into moralistic shouting which means that the statements made in it can be legitimately critiqued.

A quote will give a bit of the tenor of the article:

Although African Americans make up 12.4 percent of the U.S. population we make up 35% of the abortions

Note the 'we'. The article has black solidarity and unity running constantly through it. The reasons given to oppose abortion are not conservative or morality-based, though I do detect a certain abortion-is-murder mentality to the article. The real reason to oppose abortion, the author argues, is specifically black:

Even though abortion usually
happens as the result of a voluntary action by the expectant mother
(but not always), it has long been suspected that certain organizations
have encouraged blacks in particular to have abortions.

"Which organizations would these be?", you might ask:

Planned
Parenthood, which has long been suspected by many of placing its
clinics in areas with high concentrations of African Americans, and
whose founder once spoke at a Ku Klux Klan meeting and who spoke at
another point with Nazi anthropologist Eugen Fischer, stated that it had taken "corrective action" against the individual.

Despite the conspiracy-theory suggestions and the obligatory mentioning of Nazis and the KKK, the tone remains level-headed. When someone says such things as this but doesn't bluster, you must actually answer their statements with your own.

What the article gets wrong is the cause of abortion. It's not availability of clinics, though this does have an influence. When asked why they choose to have an abortion, the plurality of women pick, as the most important reason, 'could not support child financially.' {This is from a Time Magazine article about a year ago, I cannot find a link to it} Other important reasons include: 'unstable living arrangement', 'unstable partnership', and 'too young to take care of a child.'

The fact is that African-Americans are more often in the situation that causes women to want an abortion. It's not that they're black, it's that blacks are poor and/or financially unstable in much higher proportions than whites, at least in urban areas where clinics are more available.

So even though some people do approve of the overwhelmingly disproportionate number of black women who have abortions [They exist. I have met them.] the purpose of supporting choice for women is not to keep any racial group from out-breeding whites.

As to the question of how to end the racial imbalance of abortions, the answer is to find some way to make real lasting wealth available to African-Americans who are in a bad way. This explicitly does not mean some kind of welfare payment, since that does not fit my definition of 'lasting wealth.' This issue is far too large to deal with in one post, but I've done what I came to do: refute the notion that blacks must stand together in opposing abortion because of its effects on the black community and population. As with any group of people, no political affiliation is required by ones race. Meanwhile, for those who say that only liberal causes play identity politics, I suggest you take a good hard look at "The Values Voter's Blog."