Opposition To Abortion Rights Declining Among Black Voters, Opinion Pieces States

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 12 Jun 2009 - 4:00 PDT

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"In recent years, conservative political strategists have painted African Americans as being more opposed to abortion than the white population," but experts believe that there actually "is a declining black support for conservative social policies like abortion," Tracie Powell, a former congressional fellow with the American Political Science Association, writes in a CQ Politics opinion piece. According to Powell, a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey found that 49% of black U.S. residents -- who generally are considered more religious than the entire U.S. population -- are in favor of keeping abortion legal in most or all cases.

Powell continues that experts vary in their explanations of the declining opposition to abortion rights among blacks. She writes that Christopher Metzler, an associate dean at Georgetown University, said that economic concerns, such as the high unemployment rate for black workers, have become more important than abortion for the group. According to Powell, Metzler said that black U.S. residents also have started questioning the antiabortion-rights agenda because they received little support from conservatives in return.

Powell writes that some experts believe the feelings of black U.S. residents regarding abortion might go "deeper than current economic and social realities." Powell adds that Salamishah Tillet, founder of the organization A Long Walk Home, said that reproductive injustice for black women dates to times of slavery, when they had no reproductive rights. According to Tillet, black women face reproductive injustice in modern times through underfunding of family planning programs, lack of access to contraception and legislation like the Hyde Amendment, which restricts access to abortion for low-income women, who are disproportionately black and Hispanic.

Powell writes, "I doubt most Americans, including those who are black, consider abortion a civil rights issue, and I'm not arguing that it should be." However, "I do know that while black Americans remain one of the most religious demographics in the country, this isn't the 1960s and African Americans no longer march lock-step behind the church," she writes (Powell, CQ Politics, 6/10).

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