This week, Vice took notice of pro-life efforts (Students for Life in particular) to draw attention to the racial implications of abortion given our country’s current climate. The critique is truly delicious. In essence, the thesis is that we are racist for promoting our “Black Preborn Lives Matter” campaign.
From the word go, Vice doesn’t like us. That’s definitely worth noting. Like many youth-focused, trendy news outlets, they’re all for abortion. So regardless of what we do, they aren’t going to be on board. That said, this is still a tough critique to sell. We are racist for saying that Black babies matter, too?
Oh, but it’s not simply the message that is driving abortion supporters crazy. It’s the timing. See, we aren’t allowed to address current social issues as they relate to our organization’s mission. There are a lot of extra rules that apply to the pro-life movement and no one else. Nevermind that the pro-life movement has been decrying abortion and Planned Parenthood as racist institutions for literal decades. Students for Life’s Michele Hendrickson said it best after our painting event in Washington, D.C.:
Mission-based organizations ebb and flow with current issues. When it came out in 2015 that Planned Parenthood was trafficking baby parts, we spent ALL our time working to expose that as well as every other thing we hate about them. When an election rolls around, we spend a lot of time talking about abortion and politics. When the ACLU was trying to remove safety regulations from chemical abortion, we poured tons of energy into spreading the word about how harmful chemical abortion is.
Why would it make any sense for us to fully ignore this issue right now while EVERYONE is talking about it?
Maybe, just maybe, if the pro-life movement had NEVER talked about abortion and the Black community before, the Vice article might have half a point. Only half a point because abortion still disproportionately harms non-white women. But it’s just not the case. Look at someone like Mildred Jefferson. She was born in 1927 and died in 2010. She was the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, and she fully rejected abortion. She is credited with changing Ronald Reagan himself’s mind on the issue, and spent years as a leader in the pro-life movement.
And look at someone like Dr. Dolores Bernadette Grier, who graduated from Fordham University, passed away in 2018, and spent much of her life as a pro-life advocate.
Plus, it is real rich of the abortion movement to accuse anyone of hijacking an issue. The abortion movement wouldn’t even exist without its parasitic, toxic attachment to feminism that it secured during the Sexual Revolution of the 60s. Author Sue Ellen Browder does an excellent job explaining how abortion hijacked feminism in her book Subverted.
We’re not sorry that this message is uncomfortable for people. And we’re not going to apologize that this completely accurate message is timely with our nation’s current climate. Planned Parenthood kills about 360 Black babies every day, and that should bother Americans.
In fact, all of this should deeply bother Americans:
- Black women have the highest abortion rate by far (nearly half of pregnancies end in abortion in many places).
- Almost 80% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion facilities are located in minority neighborhoods.
- 88% of its new “mega facilities” are located within walking distance of minority neighborhoods.
- The abortion ratio is 401 abortions per 1,000 live births.
- In some cities, like New York, more black babies are aborted than born.
- In America today, a black child is five times more likely to be killed in the womb than a white child.
- About 13% of American women are Black, but they submit to over 38% of the abortions.
- More African-Americans have died from abortion than from AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer, and heart disease combined. It’s estimated that 19 million Black babies have been killed by abortion since its legalization.
- Since 1973, abortion has reduced the Black population by over 25%.*
*Arrived at by multiplying an estimated population total of 325,719,178 by 13.4%: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217
