Posted on 11/20/2007 2:49:15 AM PST by Aristotelian
(CNSNews.com) - A recent Pew Research poll reported high levels of 'hopelessness' in African-American communities across the United States, a characteristic pro-life activists are linking to high abortion rates among black women.
"Children are the future. When you destroy your children, you destroy hope," Dr. Alveda King, pastoral associate of Priests for Life and the niece of the late civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said in a statement.
"The incredibly high number of abortions performed on black women in this country has to take a toll not just on the women involved, but also on their families, friends, and communities," King said. "If African-Americans feel that life will not get better, I have to believe that abortion is feeding into that hopelessness."
King was referring to a study released Nov. 13 by the Pew Research Center, which reported that only 44 percent of blacks say they think life will be better for African-Americans in the future. One in five said they think life is better for blacks now than it was in 2002.
"I know from personal experience that abortion causes depression, regret, and despair," King said. "If we love and welcome our children, optimism for the future can only increase."
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health think tank named in honor of one of the former presidents of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, black women see higher rates of unintended pregnancy than the general population.
Ninety-eight of every 1,000 black women experience an unintended pregnancy, compared to 35 of every 1,000 whites and 78 of every 1,000 Hispanics.
African-American women are also "more than twice as likely as women overall to have an abortion," according to the institute. Black women between the ages of 15 and 19 had 84,460 abortions in 2000, according to the Institute. White women of the same age had 92,830 abortions and Hispanics accounted for 45,110.
Statistically, blacks - men and women - make up 12 percent (35 million) of the U.S. population; whites, 75 percent (215 million); and Hispanics, 15 percent (42 million).
A spokesman for the Alan Guttmacher Institute did not respond to requests for comment by press time, but the group says on its Web site that higher rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion among black women are connected to financial and marital status. The group does not mention a connection between abortion and "hopelessness."
"This [higher abortion rate] is likely because of a combination of factors, including the fact that black women are disproportionately poor and unmarried," the Web site reads.
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a conservative black author, said he believes abortion "definitely has had a major impact" on blacks' psyche, and he said other factors are also to blame, including other moral issues, education and mainstream black leadership.
"The fact that there's one parent in the home for the most part, the black man is not there for his family guiding them," Peterson said. "The most important factor is that the average black man is not providing for his family and that's why the economic situation is the way it is."
Peterson also accused mainstream African-American leadership - the NAACP, Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson - of "brainwashing" blacks to make them feel hopeless.
"They have managed to convince many blacks that they cannot make it because of racism and so a lot of them are not even putting forth the effort because they believe the lie," Peterson said.
I’d think it’s a vicious circle with a connection both ways. The more futile and hopeless a young mother-to-be feels the future to be, the more likely she is going to wish her child would not be born.
I think your friend is correct. The guilt however will eat away all joy and hope as you continue to suppress it. These women know the truth. However horrible, facing the truth will set them free.
Abortion has a major impact on a "woman's" psyche.
A friend of mine quit her RN job at a community clinic because the women coming in for follow-up visits post-abortion broke her heart.
In addition to what you said about the guilt over infanticide is the fact that abortion can be a direct result of breast cancer. See here: "Induced abortion before first term pregnancy increases the risk of breast cancer."
I believe the American Cancer Society, Planned Parenthood, etc. knew or should have known that breast cancer after an abortion is a distinct possibility.
You may recall, there was a small demographic of women who had breast cancer in the 50s and 60s pre-Roe vs Wade.
What a great article.
I have the feeling that it won’t be playing in the NYT and WaPo and ABCNNBCBS any time soon.
Once again, the poor victim. Abortion is not something they do, it is "performed" on them.
I think your friend is right.
I think another reason many people support abortion is because they know that it is necessary to preserve the racial balance in this country. That was the motivation behind the formation of Planned Parenthood all those years ago, and I see no reason why they should have changed their stripes since then.
Abortion debases the whole society. What are any of our values worth if we will let the unborn be killed by their own mothers, who simply don’t want the inconvenience of giving birth?
The Marxist-socialist struggle trumps what was created in God’s image...
This is another sad mess the sick rat has forced upon Black America. This piece didn’t say it, but since 1973 the number of murdered Black babies would make the total Black community 1/3 larger. If the KKK had planned this, they could not have been more successful.
“”Children are the future. When you destroy your children, you destroy hope,” Dr. Alveda King, pastoral associate of Priests for Life and the niece of the late civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said in a statement. “
So, Hey! Let’s continue to support liberal policies. That will fix the problem. /sarcasm
A person of some consequence here in the north, sometimes designated father, is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice. It is only once in a while that an exception is found to this statement. . . .
I say nothing of father, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families, and its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation. When they do exist, they are not the outgrowths of slavery, but are antagonistic to that system. The order of civilization is reversed here.
As Thomas Sowell has often written, the black family was making strides in the first few generations after emancipation, and overcoming Jim Crow. Seeing this the illiberal Democrats decided to keep the black man down with there anti-family no-fault divorce legislation, anti-family welfare programs, free sex revolution, abortion, and to put the final nail in the coffin, gay marriage.
Here is a partial list of Plaintiffs in Massachusettes gay marriage decision:
The plaintiffs are fourteen individuals from five Massachusetts counties. As of April 11, 2001, the date they filed their complaint, the plaintiffs Gloria Bailey, sixty years old, and Linda Davies, fifty-five years old, had been in a committed relationship for thirty years; the plaintiffs Maureen Brodoff, forty-nine years old, and Ellen Wade, fifty-two years old, had been in a committed relationship for twenty years and lived with their twelve year old daughter; the plaintiffs Hillary Goodridge, forty-four years old, and Julie Goodridge, forty-three years old, had been in a committed relationship for thirteen years and lived with their five year old daughter;
Fathers? - shrouded in mystery.
Why should we be surprised though? Here is Marx on the family:
The crude latent slavery of the family is the first property, corresponding perfectly to what economists call the power of disposing of the labour power of others. Division of labour and private property are identical expressions, one referring to activity, the other to the products of activity. They imply a contradiction between the interests of one individual or family and the communal interest.
Out of this contradiction the community takes independent form as the State, divorced from the real interests of individuals. It follows that all struggles within the State of democracy, aristocracy, monarchy, enfranchisement etc are illusory forms. The real struggle is between different classes to gain dominion in order to represent its interest as an illusion of the general interest.
As long as the division of labour exists, each man has an exclusive sphere of activity forced on him, from which he cannot escape, be it as hunter, herdsman or essayist. In communist society nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity; society regulates production and thus makes it possible for me to hunt in the morning, rear cattle in the evening, debate in the evening, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, herdsman or critic.
This fixation of social activity arises through the co-operation of individuals, determined by the division of labour, appears to them as an alien force the origin and goal of which they are ignorant. How otherwise could property have a history at all, to so have proceeded from parcellation to centralisation? Or how is it that trade, nothing more than the exchange of products, has come to rule the world through supply and demand? With the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution (of which more later) and the abolition of private property this world market power will be dissolved; and the liberation of each single individual accomplished.
Comparisons with the Nazis are so trite -- but Hitler killed 6 million Jews and we've killed 50 million children. Our crime is worse. When the day comes that we realize the magnitude of our transgression, there are millions of women (men too) who will have to face the fact they were America's "willing executioners" and people will say "How could they not have known?"
Well, I think many of them do know it. But they're whistling past the graveyard, so to speak. As long as the practice remains legal, they have some salve for their conscious and can tell themselves "I didn't do anything wrong."
This fulfills the dream of the racist Margaret Sanger, the matriarch of the abortion movement and founder of Planned Parenthood, who label herself as one of the “Fit” members of society. She called this project the “Negro Project” wherein she used abortion to control the “unfit” (her words) black population as well as Jews, those deemed white trash, etc.
This known NAZI sympathizer and collaborator is extolled by the Democrats. I deeply hope that the Americans of a greater hue will someday realize the insidious underpinnings of the Democratic Party and that their overt language does not match their covert actions.
The “New” Democrats of the Democratic Leadership Council call themselves the Third-Way which is nothing more than a National Socialist movement. The MSM has to know and is complicit in all of this. My heart is deeply saddened by the anguish of the people God so loves and has shed His grace upon.
So true. As a woman, and among women I know/knew (esp in college), their pro-abortion stance seemed directly related in verocity to the number of abortions they had (and sometimes proudly announced) and the guilt and anger they seemed to harbor. Misery does love company.
Should abortion become illegal, these women would have to face the fact that they committed infanticide. That dreaded prospect keeps them supporting abortion, even though many, in their heart of hearts, may know it's wrong.
So true - a fact many already know, just don't like to admit. If it became illegal, they would have to face it in a new way, and for some, a public way. And it amazes me sometimes, as with a late coworker of mine, that even though they feel this guilt and misery and know they ended a life, they rush headlong into making sure more women follow their miserable lead.
Thanks. Your comments were very informative.
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