Racism, eugenics still fuel Planned Parenthood, black pro-life leader charges

Washington D.C., Mar 1, 2007 / 15:21 pm

Racism surrounding the abortion rate must be recognized and stopped, said Day Gardner, president of National Black Pro-Life Union. “The eugenic policies of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, appear to be alive and well and still directed at black women,” she charged in a press release.

Gardner was responding to a Feb. 26 press release on Reproductive Rights and African-American Women issued the previous day by abortion advocate Ipas.  In addition to discussing the history between blacks and abortion, Ipas listed reasons for black American women to take part in the abortion movement. It claimed the high rate of abortions among black women was reason enough to warrant their greater involvement and support.
 
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, more than 90 percent of all abortion providers are located in metropolitan areas. Planned Parenthood, America’s leading abortion promoter and provider, identifies its core clients as young women, low-income women, and women of color.
 
According to Gardner: “The abortion industry purposefully targets the African American community. The question is why? The abortion industry places abortion clinics in our minority and poor neighborhoods to “coax us” into thinking abortion is the best answer — the only answer to an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy — and we ask why?
 
“Black women don’t have to kill our children to have productive, successful lives. Instead of embracing the ‘right to kill’ our children in the name of reproductive choice, we should be working to ensure that each and every African American child is given every opportunity—to experience life—to prove herself/himself—to become part of our rich cultural heritage—to change the world—and maybe also to save it.”

Since 1973, more than 44 million unborn children have been legally killed in this country; of these, almost 15 million of them were black.  Abortion is the number one killer of African Americans — killing more black people than all other deaths combined, Gardner states.
 
African-American women make up only 13 percent of the United States population of women who are of child-bearing age, yet 37 percent of all abortions are performed on black women. The abortion rate among black women is more than three times higher than that of white women.
 
“It is not whether black women have access to reproductive ‘choices’,” said Gardner. “But rather: Why they are fooled into thinking that they have to make a choice to destroy their child at all. Why have so many black women bought into the lie that their children, born in inner cities, are less deserving of life?”