Abortion Causing 'Black Genocide,' Activists Say
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 07, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - During America's commemoration of Black History Month, some pro-life activists are charging that legalized abortion has led to a "black genocide" of more than 14 million unborn African-American babies. They condemn, in particular, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, whose president Gloria Feldt announced last week that she's resigning.
"For every five African-American women who get pregnant, three have an abortion," Clenard Childress Jr., director of the Northeast Chapter of the Life Education And Resource Network, told the Cybercast News Service. "This is a horrific injustice to women, and it's decimating our communities."
Childress runs the BlackGenocide.org website, which quotes a number of disturbing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
-- Since 1973, more than twice as many blacks have died from abortion than from heart disease, cancer, accidents, violent crimes and AIDS combined;
-- Blacks make up about 12 percent of the population in the United States but account for 32 percent of the abortions; and
-- About 1,450 black infants are aborted every day in this country.
Childress, who also serves as senior pastor of the New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, N.J., said he started the site "to tell the truth about what abortion is, to expose the lies of the abortion industry and their targeting of unsuspecting young women -- especially African-Americans -- and to let others know the horrifying statistics of the abortion rate for blacks in this nation."
The website got its name in part from a speech delivered in 1977 by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who now states that he supports abortion rights.
"Abortion is black genocide," Jackson said in 1977. "What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience?" he asked.
Later in that speech, Jackson wondered how America might be affected 20 or 30 years down the road. Childress said we now know the answer to Jackson's question. "You can see for yourself. We have a genocidal mindset. There's no sanctity of life; there's no reverence for life itself," Childress said.
'Death culture'
Another reason for Childress' use of the term "black genocide" stems from what he sees as the sociological impact of abortion.
"Many poor children see their mothers, often in a single-parent situation, begin to have their stomachs rise and talk happily about having a child," Childress said. "But at some point, there's no more talk of a baby. And the children hear the mother say: 'I got rid of it.' These children, often at a very young age, hear or see or understand that this life, which was once being celebrated, has been terminated."
Childress said this has long-term consequences for the surviving children. "The child says: 'Well, there was a problem, and Mom got rid of it.' So later on in life, when the suggestion is made to 'get rid' of another problem such as an unintended pregnancy, it's not as repulsive to them as it would be for me at that age," according to Childress.
Today's entertainment reflects this culture, he stated. "Usher, who is number one on the music charts, talks about how he was upset with his woman because she wouldn't have an abortion," Childress said. "There are other songs about making her have one or punching her so she would have one. And these songs sell. That's scary to me."
Another part of the BlackGenocide.org website deals with "the targeting of black women by the abortion industry." According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 94 percent of all abortion providers are located in metropolitan areas, which generally have high black populations.
Childress said that this targeting occurs for two reasons.
The first is "unquestionably the love of money," he said. "The abortion business is quite lucrative. If it was not lucrative, it would not be legal."
Since about one-third of all abortions are performed on black women, the abortion industry has received over $4 billion from the African-American community, he noted.
Childress was particularly critical of Planned Parenthood, not just as the nation's top abortion provider, but also because the organization operates a disproportionately high number of facilities in areas with large minority populations.
Mark Crutcher, founder and president of the Texas-based pro-life group, Life Dynamics, agreed with Childress' criticism of Planned Parenthood.
"Think about it from the standpoint of any service or good or product that you might sell," Crutcher said. "I don't care what the product is. If most of the ice cream companies were in minority neighborhoods, then they'd probably buy a disproportionate percentage of ice cream cones."
An analysis by the Cybercast News Service compared the location of Planned Parenthood abortion clinics with population data from the U.S. Census in 2000. The results appear to bolster the charge that the organization targets black communities.
Planned Parenthood does not provide a comprehensive list of the organization's clinics that perform abortions. However, the locations of 160 Planned Parenthood abortion facilities are available from the website of Stop Planned Parenthood (STOPP) International, a subdivision of the aggressively pro-life American Life League.
Using the Census information, the percentage of the black population in each community where a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic existed was compared to the percentage of the black population statewide. In nearly two-thirds (62.5 percent) of the comparisons, the communities with a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic had a higher percentage of blacks than the state did as a whole.
In Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts and Ohio, the communities containing all of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinics had much higher black populations than their respective states, while Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming -- all of which have low black populations -- have none of the organization's abortion facilities.
Two states with high black populations -- Louisiana (32.5 percent) and Mississippi (36.3 percent) -- also have no Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, due in large part to the strength of pro-life forces in that part of the nation and state laws that restrict access to abortion, according to Jim Sedlak, executive director of STOPP International.
For the full analysis on Planned Parenthood abortion clinics and black population percentages, click here.
'Racist in effect, not intent'
Childress added that the abortion business targets blacks for another reason besides financial returns. Whether intentional or not, he said, the abortion industry is following in the footsteps of Planned Parenthood's "founding mother," Margaret Sanger, a leader in the eugenics movement who in 1939 created the so-called "Negro Project" to promote birth control to black women.
Crutcher's organization has its own website criticizing Sanger's philosophy and the disproportionate number of black abortions. It's called KlanParenthood.com and features the sarcastic motto, "We Are the Hood in Parenthood."
Nevertheless, Crutcher said he believes abortionists' motives are not as much racial as they are economic and elitist.
"I'm not convinced that any of the people who have run Planned Parenthood over the years have said, 'Let's wipe out all the black people,' but that's been the effect of it," he stated. "Their attitude toward poor whites is basically the same as their attitude toward poor blacks."
Marjorie Signer, communications director for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) with a similar-sounding name to the Planned Parenthood founder, agreed, telling the Cybercast News Service that higher abortion rates among black women are more due to financial factors than race.
"We're talking about low-income women here, some of whom are minority, some of whom are not," Signer said. "I prefer to talk in terms of income level because it really is much more a matter of individuals who have access to resources and health care than it is race."
Signer added: "If better, comprehensive, medically accurate, realistic, honest sex education were available at an earlier age, this would make a difference in terms of what people do, what women at all income levels do."
Childress said Signer's perception is "somewhat jaded because anyone can say, 'I'm not ready to have a baby because of money.' Anyone can say that. Their excuse is the economy.
"If you really want to tell the truth, most women have abortions because they don't want the change in lifestyle," he added. "Abortion has now become just a means of contraception."
Nearly all abortions, Childress said, are the result of a woman not wanting to go through pregnancy and motherhood. "Of course, we admonish women to have their children with their married spouse, but to say that we cannot afford and therefore we then kill is unconscionable and immoral to me," he said.
Education is the answer
While Childress, Crutcher and Signer offer different reasons for the high rate of abortion among blacks, they agree on the best solution to the problem: education.
"Pro-life organizations have to do a better job of getting our message out," said Crutcher of Life Dynamics, who's hopeful for the future. "Polls show people are becoming increasingly pro-life, with the highest percentage of those individuals among the young."
Crutcher referred to a poll conducted last year by Zogby International that showed similar sentiments among African-Americans. Of the blacks who took part in the survey, 62 percent said abortion should never be legal or be legal only when the mother's life is in danger or in cases of rape and incest. Only 38 percent of the African-Americans in the poll favored abortion for any reason at any time during pregnancy.
Meanwhile, Signer at the RCRC pointed to a number of programs operated by that group, including the Black Church Initiative, the teen-oriented Keeping It Real and Breaking the Silence.
"We work with African-American churches throughout the country regarding faith-based sexuality education," she said. "In those programs, we work with churches, clergy and educators -- with the permission of the pastor -- to help youth and adults think about sexuality within the context of their faith and become spiritually and sexually responsible human beings.
"We also try to help individuals and families break the silence," Signer stated. "In African-American communities, sexuality and abortion often have not been discussed. Even sexual orientation is not a very comfortable topic. We try to help people begin to discuss these things so they're better able to deal with them in a way they feel is appropriate.
"Of course, we always stress abstinence, but we recognize that many people are already sexually active," Signer added.
Childress agreed with Signer on the importance of education, but he differed with her regarding what should be taught.
"If most women knew what an abortion was, they would not do it," he said. "Ninety percent of women who see a sonogram choose not to abort, but it's sold to them. It's deceptively, subliminally sold to them, and they are deceived.
"If Roe v. Wade were to end tomorrow, that would be all well and good because the laws of the land should reflect the God it was founded upon," Childress stated. "But has the conscience of America changed? Would it mean that women then would say, 'Oh, abortion is wrong'? No. There needs to be massive education.
"Most women don't know that at 21 days, there's a heartbeat," he said. "Most women don't know that at 48 days, there are brain waves. If I was to get in an accident in my car and was unconscious, the first thing they would check is if I have a pulse. They would then rush me to the hospital to check if I still have brain waves.
"Well, that doesn't mean a hill of beans in the womb," Childress noted. "You can have a pulse, you can have a heartbeat, you can have brain waves, and you can still be killed. That is, to me, extremely hypocritical. It's an outrageous injustice that goes beyond bigotry."
Inflammatory imagery
Signer told the Cybercast News Service that abortion among blacks "is a very complicated topic that has drawn perhaps the most disturbing kind of rhetoric from some groups that oppose abortion. They have said that there is a holocaust. They have really gone far beyond a discussion of issues into a very dangerous and demeaning place.
"I'm not African-American, but I work with a lot of people who are," she said, "and I know that there is a feeling in this community that goes way back to how women feel that they need to have control of their bodies because, for so long in this country, they did not.
"The use of this really disturbing and -- well, inflammatory is not a strong enough word -- imagery having to do with abortion as a holocaust and killing black babies and so on is very unfortunate," Signer stated.
"It does not help anything, really, and demeans people. It suggests that African-American women who choose to have an abortion or use birth control methods and so on, don't know what they're doing and are being taken advantage of," she said.
"We in the RCRC would not say that. We would say that women who have information are really very capable of deciding what's best for themselves and their own needs on their own terms," Signer said.
"Those who use this kind of language -- holocaust and so on -- really, really should give it more thought and really are not being fair and certainly are not being moral."
Childress strongly disagreed.
"That's what they said about the holocaust. That's what they said about slavery," Childress said. "It scares me when people worry about other people hearing the truth, because the truth has been suppressed for so long.
"A hairdresser at a barber shop has more regulation and scrutiny than a clinic that performs abortions," Childress added. "That's not state-regulated, and abortion is the most practiced operation on women in America today.
"If you stop a heart, to my understanding, you just took a life," Childress added. "Under what conditions is that not taking a life? Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right. Slavery was legal. Imprisoning Jews was legal. But that didn't make it right."
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