Mythbusting Race and Abortion
This OpEd originally appeared as an audio commentary on The World And Everything In It. Listen to all of Ryan’s audio commentaries on World here.
One percent. I hear those two words so often.
Less than one percent of the 36,060 abortions in New York City in the last reported year were among White women. Yet, abortions in the black community–only 23 percent of the population–comprised the largest percentage of the city’s deaths in utero: an astounding 38 percent! The numbers get even more alarming when you look at the abortion ratio in each group identified by the New York State Department of Health. For every 1,000 live births in the black community, there were 763 abortions. This is a ratio that is 7 times higher than Whites and 2.2 times higher than Hispanics. In Manhattan, where Planned Parenthood is headquartered, more black babies are aborted than born alive. For every 1,000 black babies born, there are 1,160 aborted! It’s the only demographic in NYC where more are killed than born alive.
Despite these numbers, pro-abortion activists today often claim that there is a “lack of access” to abortion in the black community. This narrative was the drum beat long before Roe was overturned.
Like nearly everything in pro-abortion activism, it’s blatantly false. How can the black community simultaneously “lack access” yet comprise the largest percentage of those impacted by the violence of abortion? And don’t let the because-it’s-poverty mantra fool you. Hispanics in New York City have higher poverty rates than Black individuals and families yet have roughly half the abortion rates.
The Center for Disease Control’s newest Abortion Surveillance Report confirms a decades-long trend of decreased abortions among White women and drastically increased abortions among Black women. By the way, the CDC snuck out this latest and devastating report the day before Thanksgiving, a day when Americans would obviously be distracted. But numbers like these should wake us up: nationwide, nearly 42% of America’s abortions are now committed on black babies.
Abortion, no matter the beautiful hue of skin, is a tragedy. I point out these new statistics not to elevate anyone’s value above another but to highlight an insidious fiction deeply rooted in mainstream media news coverage, academia, and Democratic politicians’ bogus talking points.
Somehow, they believe “racism” is preventing people of my complexion from “accessing” abortion–a violent act that disproportionately kills black lives. One Planned Parenthood affiliate bizarrely claims: “Due to the robust legacy of racism in the United States, a disproportionate number of Black people face harmful barriers to accessing quality, affordable health care services.”
By “harmful barriers” to health, do they mean their own relentless targeting of vulnerable women and babies? The reality is that the abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is the most robust legacy of racism in this country. Planned Parenthood kills more Black lives in two weeks than the KKK lynched in a century.
Back to that one percent. I would estimate that only one percent of what the nearly $2 billion abortion chain says is true. Sadly, a large majority fall for their lethal lies.
