Columnist Addresses Abortion In African-American Community

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 16 Jul 2008 - 10:00 PDT

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According to Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn, anti-abortion members of the NAACP "can't understand why America's most venerated civil rights organization turns a blind eye to what they say is the abortion industry's practice of targeting poor minority neighborhoods." An anti-abortion protest occurred during NAACP's 99th annual conference on Monday, and it "went mostly unmentioned," McGurn writes.

McGurn, who states that abortion "disproportionately affects African-Americans," cites a Guttmacher Institute fact sheet indicating that black women are 4.8 times as likely as white women to have an abortion. In addition, CDC research shows that among white women, one in five pregnancies ends in abortion, compared with one in two among black women, McGurn adds.

If "we really want a world where abortion is more rare, could not the NAACP help?" McGurn writes. He adds, "Just imagine if [NAACP] used its voice and resources to ensure that, beside all those Planned Parenthood clinics located in our minority neighborhoods, [black] women could find another kind of place" where "a scared young pregnant woman could carry her baby to term, complete her education, train for a new job, and be treated with the love and respect that a mother needs and deserves."

Black women should have "two doors open to them," McGurn writes. He says that the first door "would still lead to" Planned Parenthood and the "other would lead to people whose business is of a vastly different order: welcoming these children into the world, and getting their moms the help they need to live lives of purpose and dignity" (McGurn, Wall Street Journal, 7/15).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

© 2008 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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