(ThyBlackMan.com) When the US Supreme Court in 1973 rendered its decision on Roe v. Wade polling showed that Blacks more than any other grouping in the US opposed abortion. The decision basically protected as a constitutional right the ability to have an abortion.
Many Black civil rights activists at the time denounced the procedure as a form of genocide. Rev. Jesse Jackson called abortion “murder” and stated that “we used to look for death from the man in the blue coat and now it comes in a white coat.”
He also stated that “Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people. Here arguments for inconvenience and economic savings take precedence over arguments for human value and human life.”
Rev. Jackson would later somewhat change his opinion on abortion when he became a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president.
Dick Gregory stated, “Government family planning programs designed for poor Blacks which emphasize birth control and abortion with the intent of limiting the Black population is genocide. The deliberate killing of Black babies by abortion is genocide perhaps the most overt form of all.”
Almost fifty years later, Blacks have gone from significantly opposing abortion to Blacks women nationally terminating pregnancies at far higher rates than other demographic group of women.
According to data, in 2014, 36 percent of all abortions were performed on Black women, who are just 13 percent of the female population. Black women have the highest abortion ratio in the country, with 474 abortions per 1,000 live births. Approximately, more than 19 million Black babies have been aborted since 1973.
It is argued, the prevalence of abortion facilities within minority communities serves as a major contributor to the rate in which Black women obtain abortions. Accordingly, Black women are five times more likely to have an abortion than white women.
Some pro life activists maintain that historically, Blacks have been the unwitting victims of a hidden racist agenda promoted by abortion and birth control organizations. That Blacks, particularly Black women were receiving a new civil right. That civil right being – choice.
That pro-abortion forces created a messaging that reinforced the notion of abortion as a civil right.
On the other hand, some might argue that if those 19 million Black yet to be born children had not been aborted, the voting power of the Black community would now be at 16 percent nationally rather than the current 13 percent.
They would point out that they find it ironic that Blacks who are urging greater Black power seem unaware that a majority of their political leaders support policies which limit such power by destroying their future constituency.
It takes a village to raise a child. It takes self serving, misguided political leaders and others through unquestionable policies which contributed to the death and continued destruction of the Black community.
Abortion has become a highly charged political issue in the US. At the same time, there are those who view abortion a sin.
The sin however is the politicization of abortion by individuals on both sides of the issue. A plague on the houses of the pro life and the pro choice.
What is also a sin, an even greater sin, is that too many individuals and families in the US, supposedly the richest nation in the world, the greatest nation of all time, are forced to wonder if they have the economic means to raise a child.
No one in the US, which boasts to the world its wealth, should have to choose between the life or death of an unborn child because of financial consideration. But many do, too many. That very fact is a sin, an abominable sin.
Life is precious. It is also sacred. As people whose ancestors were an enslaved people, who survived the inhumanity of Jim Crow and the barbarism of demented and demonic racists, Blacks can never forget that Black lives matter.
The decision to bring a child into the world is not something that politicians and others should play politics with. But they irresponsibly do.
The decision to conceive is a decision between two people. Family members and others including their religious, spiritual and moral advisers as well as their doctor can provide input about that decision, but only if asked. As for the government it needs to butt out.
Insisting on individuals bringing a baby into the world for some political or religious dogma is inappropriate. It is inhumane and wrong if it means the child is going to live a life of incredible pain, suffering and sorrow.
Declaring “right to life and pro-life” for the yet to be born in the womb and not caring at all for its well being outside the womb is sanctimonious and fraudulent. It is especially so if those same political and religious individuals and institutions after the child is born basically turned their back and/or implemented policies and practices that guarantee the child lives a life of poverty, neglect and abuse.
At that point, their actions go beyond just being sanctimonious. They are unconscionable, sacrilege, immoral if not outright criminal.
Equally as bad and just as immoral, imbecilic and dunderheaded are the “my body, my choice” folks. In their rhetoric and sloganeering they completely ignore science. Science which maintains that it takes both a man and woman to conceive a child.
If the woman can conceive without the man well then “my body, my choice” makes sense. Though, that is not what the science indicates. Science declares with humans that conception is a product of a man and woman.
Therefore, the man has just as much a right as the woman to be involved with the decision to bring the child into the world or not bring a child into the world. The man also has a responsibility and duty to share the cost of that decision.
The very ones who would scream the loudest “my body, my choice” would also be the one’s once the child was born to insist that the man pay child support. “My body, my choice, your pay.”
Both sides of the political debate are equally irresponsible.
It is the couple themselves who must make the life altering decision about bringing a child into the world. A world in which they might already be struggling to survive, to exist. A world in which they might be faced with a poverty death sentence which neither the right to life or my body, my choice crowd would offer any clemency.
If Black lives matter then Blacks must be protective of those lives from the womb to the tomb. Blacks cannot allow those who would use the issue of abortion to further their political agendas be it “right to life” or “my body, my choice” to come at the expense of Black lives.
At the same time, Blacks must confront head on certain realities. One such reality is that Blacks will get up and down over the death of a single Black person at the hands of a White police officer. Yet, stay silent every day as scores of Blacks lives are senseless taken at the hands of other Blacks from gun and domestic violence as well as questionable lifestyle choices, practices and policies.
Blacks need not worry about White supremacists killing them. They are too busy by various ways killing each other. Abortion might be just one of those ways.
Blacks must not allow politicians who pretend to speak for Blacks including those who might even look Black to push ideas and issues which result in Blacks performing self genocide. If we must be worried of Greeks bearing gifts, then we must also be just as concerned and on guard of Negroes pushing agendas created by others which result in our abortion.
Staff Writer; Al Alatunji
Question? Comment? Regarding the above article. Feel free to send a message to this address: Alatunji@ThyBlackMan.com.
