ABC News Gives Rare Attention to High Rate of Abortions on Black Women

by Brad Wilmouth
February 23, 2010

LifeNews.com Note: Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst for the Media Research Center and a graduate of the University of Virginia. This column originally appeared on the NewsBusters web site.

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DIANE SAWYER: African-American women are front and center in a debate tonight about race and abortion, prompted by dozens of billboards looming over several neighborhoods in Atlanta. Steve Osunsami tells us about a debate stretching back through history.

STEVE OSUNSAMI: In the heart of black neighborhoods across Atlanta, these are the billboards causing the trouble. The message is simple – that black children are an endangered species because of too many abortions in the black community. The anti-abortionists behind the billboards are black themselves.

RYAN BOMBERGER, BILLBOARD DESIGNER: We're trying to raise awareness in the African-American community to say, "Look, here are the numbers. Here’s what’s happening."

OSUNSAMI: It is true that, of the 35,000 women in Georgia who received abortions in 2008, nearly 21,000 were black women, more than twice the number of white women. Nationally, while black women are one and a half times more likely than white women to become pregnant, the CDC says black women are three times more likely to get an abortion. Loretta Ross says the figures are unfair. For 14 years, she’s run an agency that’s fought to provide black women with abortion services.

LORETTA ROSS, NATIONAL COORDINATOR OF SISTER SONG: To a black woman, when you talk about not being able to control the timing and the spacing of our children, guess what that harkens back to: slavery. Why should we be discriminated against and then have you suggest that, but it’s for the good of the race?

OSUNSAMI: But the other side worries that abortion is killing the black community.

CATHERINE DAVIS, GEORGIA RIGHT TO LIFE: My people are dying. My people are dying, and nobody cares that my people are dying. And I want people to be, to look at this. Is there any truth to what we are saying?

OSUNSAMI: Among African-Americans, this argument that abortion is bad for the race is an old one, but it’s not usually debated so openly. As far back as the 1940s, many black Americans resisted abortion, quietly fearing that abortion was an attempt at black extermination. That changed in the 70s when women’s groups convinced civil rights leaders that they were both fighting a similar cause: the right to control their own bodies. The billboard’s idea that abortion is genocide has made a comeback in some parts of the black community. Fueling this is the growing number of Latinos who have fewer abortions, more children, and are now a larger ethnic minority than black Americans. The black women we met on the streets of Atlanta feel targeted.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: It’s offensive to me as a black woman. It’s offensive.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: They need to tear it down. They need to put something else up.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: I think it’s just a racist thing that they put out.

OSUNSAMI: They say that they hate that these billboards shame black women and black people. The people who put the billboards up say at least everyone’s talking. Steve Osunsami, ABC News, Atlanta.