PrintJuly 20, 2010
Race-Targeted Abortion: Today's Greatest Civil Rights Challenge
Since its forced-legalization in 1973, more African-Americans have been killed by abortion than have died of AIDS, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and violent crime combined. One need not dig deep to see that this is not by accident.
Recent investigations have shown that Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading abortion provider, enthusiastically accept funds explicitly for the termination of African-American children. One recording demonstrates that when asked if funds can be given for abortion "specifically for a black baby ... because I really face trouble with affirmative action, and I don't want my kids being disadvantaged against black kids," Planned Parenthood's Vice-President responds, "Oh, always, always. Absolutely!"
Faye Wattleton, the former Planned Parenthood National President, confirmed that "we have received contributions from people who want to support us because they want all welfare mothers and all black women to stop having children."
Because of these efforts, even though African-Americans comprise only 12% of the population, they account for 37% of abortions; an African-American baby is five times more likely to be aborted than a white child.
This is especially troubling considering Planned Parenthood's known history of racism. Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, published that
"in virtually every community where Negroes dwell one finds them, in fat times and lean alike, contributing a disproportionate number to the rolls of dependents and delinquents. They make excessive demands on the white man's charity and over tax his patience."
She lamented that "we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all." Ms. Sanger was a celebrated speaker at Ku Klux Klan rallies, and personally appointed to her Board of Directors a noted white supremacist and Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan.
Planned Parenthood operates the largest chain of abortion clinics in the United States, with an estimated 80 percent strategically positioned in minority neighborhoods. A former clinic director recently revealed that they "really wanted to increase the number of abortions;" they even have abortion quotas or a "goal every month for abortion."
The result is that abortion now kills more African-Americans every four days than the Ku Klux Klan killed in over 150 years. In fact, today abortion stands as the number one cause of death in the African-American community.
The disparate impact that Planned Parenthood continues to have on the African-American community is clear. As famed civil rights leader Dr. Alveda King recently stated,
"Today the vast majority of Planned Parenthood clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. Are we really to believe that this is a coincidence ... or could it be that when we said that we would no longer sit on the back of the bus, a place was being reserved for us at the abortion clinic?"
Planned Parenthood receives, on average, more than $380 million every year in taxpayer dollars from the federal government. The "Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (H.R. 1822)" recently introduced in Congress would prohibit federal funding for organizations that accept money for the purpose of race-targeted abortions. Passing this bill is the necessary next step in defending the civil rights of our most vulnerable citizens.
