Abortion of black babies in US disproportionately high

Babies of black women are significantly more likely to be aborted when compared to other groups, recent US figures have shown.

According to data released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), abortion rates among black women are over three times higher than those among white women.

While only 13.4 per cent of the US population identify their race as black, black women account for 33.6 per cent of all reported abortions. The CDC looked at data provided by 30 states, plus Washington DC.

Planned Parenthood

Alexandra Desanctis, writing in the American magazine National Review, said the abortion industry was “perpetuating Margaret Sanger’s racist legacy”. Sanger was the founder of what became the abortion giant Planned Parenthood.

Desanctis observed: “Nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clinics are located within walking distance of neighborhoods occupied predominantly by black and Hispanic residents.”

In 2017, Planned Parenthood was severely criticised for advocating that black women were better off having an abortion than giving birth.

The abortion giant said in a Twitter post: “If you’re a Black woman in America, it’s statistically safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term”.

Statistical differences

In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, babies of white women were aborted at the lowest rate, with 6.3 abortions taking place per 1,000 women.

By comparison, for the same period, babies of black women were aborted at the highest rate, with 21.2 abortions per 1,000 women.

The CDC, which uses the terms “non-Hispanic Black” and “non-Hispanic White” in its data collection, said that “similar differences” had been observed in other US-based research.

Eugenics

US Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas has stated that “abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation”.

Charting the historical connection between eugenics and race Thomas said: “Sanger herself campaigned for birth control in black communities.

“In 1930, she opened a birth-control clinic in Harlem. Then, in 1939, Sanger initiated the ‘Negro Project,’ an effort to promote birth control in poor, Southern black communities.”

The judge concluded: “Eight decades after Sanger’s ‘Negro Project,’ abortion in the United States is also marked by a considerable racial disparity.”