soon lose their status as the nation’s largest minority group, and abortion has been a driving force in this population shift. From 1973 to 2004, approximately 15 million blacks have lost their lives to abortion in the United States! The 2002 census shows that the black population in the U.S. stands at approximately 36 million. That means that nearly 30% of the black population has been lost to abortion, more than one in four.
Of Planned Parenthood’s 850 nationwide clinics, almost 80% reside in minority communities. Is this a bizarre coincidence, or is it merely an extension of the eugenic principles that seem to have driven Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, a founder who is documented as saying, “We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”2 This statement, written in a 1939 letter to a colleague, can obviously be taken in one of two ways. Either she didn’t want the black community to wrongly assume that her efforts promoting birth control were an attempt to eliminate them, or she didn’t want the black community to find out that this is exactly what she had in mind. Planned Parenthood assumes the first, her opponents assume the latter. Based on the greater context of her writings, the truth likely lies in between. She probably didn’t have in mind the elimination of all blacks, but it is quite reasonable to infer that she did want to keep them in submission and in line. Whatever the case may be, the bottom line is this. Margaret Sanger’s vision of social purification was rooted in birth control and sterilization. Compared with abortion, these were minor threats to minority communities. Planned Parenthood’s contemporary vision of social purification is much more menacing. No longer is the organization driven by pregnancy prevention, it is now driven by pregnancy elimination. We can debate the racial intent of Planned Parenthood past and present, but we cannot debate the results. Abortion is by no means an equal opportunity killer. Abortion is by no means good for the minority community.
1. The Centers for Disease Control categorizes race by three groups: white, black, and other races. Other races included Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian, Alaska Native, and women classified as “other” race. Ethnicity is categorized as Hispanic and non-Hispanic. Race and ethnicity are provided as separate characteristics and abortions are not cross-classified by race and ethnicity. Abortion numbers, ratios and rates are presented by race and by ethnicity.
2. Donovan, Charles and Marshall, Robert, Blessed Are The Barren The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood, (Ignatius Press, 1991), pages 17-18.
* “MINORITY ABORTIONS” is also available online within Abort73.com’s The Racial Case Against Abortion.