Abortion and civil rights (Erin)

So, why is this the case? What would help bring it down? Does it have to do with the disproportionate incarceration rate of young men of African-American heritage? The generally poor opportunities in very poor neighborhoods?

Would we see that this comes from poverty rather than race if we just looked at the abortion rates of the poorest decile?

Speaking of bad analogies: Genocide is an aggressive act against a group of people. If we are to label abortions requested by and performed on black women genocide then those women would have to be included in the list of perpetrators.

it's a civil rights issue.

Yes - the civil rights issue of whether or not women will control their own reproductive options or whether the State will do so.

Speaking of domestic terrorism, this afternoon a person opened fire just inside the Holocaust Museum on the Mall in Washington, DC, wounding one guard
before being wounded himself by other guards returning fire.

CBS is reporting that the shooter is white supremacist James Von Brunn.

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1693510

Definitions:

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Wiki) defines it as:

...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The element of the definition that would apply here is of course (d), but that requires that the measures be "imposed". Whether abortion is a choice or forbidden, I don't see anyone "imposing" it on any group or community.

Using the term "genocide" for the disproportionate share of abortion within the African-American community is hyperbole, I'm afraid, and cheapens a term that we might be better saving for places like Nazi Germany, Rwanda and Darfur.

"Would we see that this comes from poverty rather than race if we just looked at the abortion rates of the poorest decile?"

An excellent point. It leads to the question of how many of these African-American women would rather have carried their children to term but, because of their economic situation, became convinced that this was the only realistic choice for them? It would also be interesting to see if the cutbacks in welfare and other support programs during the Clinton and Bush years had any effect in possibly increasing the rate of abortion in this group.

A civil rights issue indeed, perhaps as much as economic as racial.

Hector,
Do non-white doctors urge "Black women to destroy their children"?

The civil rights activists of the 1960s (including my priest back home who protested for Black voting rights in the 1960s, and for the pro life cause today) would have been horrified at the sight of White doctors urging Black women to destroy their children, just like a sweatshop boss in some Phillippine factory.

They also would have been horrified at the state saying women, especially African American women, are incapable of making informed decisions about their bodies and therefore the police and the government need to step in and make these decisions for women.

Hector,

There are many ways to induce someone to do something horrible besides brute force.

Yes, but the definition itself uses the term "imposing". That's very different from "urging".

I agree entirely that the trap that many African-American women find themselves in is intolerable, and that many of the factors that put them there come from outside their own community. But that's not the same as forceful imposition of abortion.

Something can be tremendously destructive to a community without being genocide.

"They also would have been horrified at the state saying women, especially African American women, are incapable of making informed decisions about their bodies and therefore the police and the government need to step in and make these decisions for women."

Yes. The memory of Tuskeegee would be rather fresh in their minds, no doubt.

"But the Washington Times quotes Dr. Carhart extensively, and the quotes don't back that up. It seems the Washington Times is playing fast and loose with the truth. Don't be suckered."

Do we have anything from a less biased source regarding his remarks? Maybe a transcript from a reputable group like C-Span?

An interesting story about an interview Dr. Carhart gave just after the murder of Dr. Tiller.

omahanewsstand.com/articles/2009/06/10/bellevue_leader/news//doc4a23d536a9927504925445.txt

Carhart said the debate is often framed around faith.

"These killers are not Christians. They're terrorists," he said. "People walking into restaurants with bombs on their backs, how is that any different than walking into a church and shooting a man down?"

In doing a search for Dr. Carhart's remarks on MLK, I find that the only sources mentioning it are the Washington Times and WorldNetDaily (which I believe quotes the Times).

See Loretta Ross' piece, "Re-enslaving African American Women," where she addresses this exact subject. In it she says:

"To label family planning and legal abortion programs “genocide” is male rhetoric, for male ears. It falls flat to female listeners and to thoughtful male ones. Women know, and so do many men, that two or three children who are wanted, prepared for, reared amid love and stability, and educated to the limit of their ability will mean more for the future of the Black and brown races from which they come than any number of neglected, hungry, ill-housed and ill-clothed youngsters."

http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/2008fall/cafe2/article/22

Ross is the National Coordinator of SisterSong, a national coalition of 80+ women of color and allied reproductive justice organizations headquartered in Atlanta. Ross researches and writes extensively on African American women and abortion and co-authored Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, a book on the history of the activism of women of color.

Franklin Jennings,

Prcisely. All this business about 'choice' and 'autonomy' is so much nonsense, I'm surprised they think anyone takes it seriously.

All this business about 'choice' and 'autonomy' is so much nonsense, I'm surprised they think anyone takes it seriously.

Well, we just don't share your gnosticism.

The whole rhetorical strategy of attempting to trade on the opinions of African American civil rights leaders in an effort to bolster the "civil rights cred" of an unrelated political struggle is rather irritating.

For example, I'm strongly in favor extending marriage rights to gays an lesbians, and I also believe it's a civil right (i.e., a right that derives from the state). Still, I find it irritating when we gay rights supporters wrap ourselves up too closely in the language of the African American civil rights movement and are too quick to draw analogies. Yes, Coretta Scott King supported marriage equality; yes, Desmond Tutu is a strong supporter of gay rights. But, I still think it's better to advance our own arguments rather than trying to bask in some reflected glow of successful leaders of other civil rights movements that essentially all Americans now view as just causes (exceptions for unreconstructed segregationists and so forth).

Even worse is the subtext of this post, which is that the opinions of random black people are somehow are trump cards whenever one invokes any reference to things like "hate crimes" or "civil rights" or "social movements." It's irritating when the left does it, and it's just as irritating when the right does it.

There is some merit to the charge that there are darker motivations - like attendance figures and racial fear - but I truly doubt that is the inspiration for the typical pro-life supporter.

Seminary president says smaller families hurting baptism totals
Associated Baptist Press, June 9, 2009

In an April 16 chapel address at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary that started the discussion, seminary President Daniel Akin was more explicit. "Southern Baptists have been seduced by the sirens of modernity in a very important place," he said. "We have been seduced in how we do family and how many we should have in the home."

...Akin said another seminary president, Albert Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, showed him statistics that declining baptisms paralleled the trend toward Southern Baptists having smaller families. Akin said he remembered when he was a seminary student and Bertha Smith, an iconic Southern Baptist missionary who died in 1988, "scared the daylights" out of seminarians by telling them that using birth control is a sin.

...Akin said that is demonstrated by looking no farther than Europe. "Islam will take over Europe and it will never fire a shot," he said. "They will simply outnumber them as white Europeans have less or no children, and Muslims continue to have them at a very large, healthy rate. You say, 'What are you saying?' I'm saying you need to have a bunch of kids," Akin said. "It has a missiological motivation."

I would call it genocide committed against black women against their young. As a black woman, I think I can say this without being labeled a racist.

Good for Ms. King for speaking out against it.

Freelunch,

I do support a stronger safety net and welfare state to help support mothers with children. I supported those things before I became pro-life, and I support them now. And I also happen to favor changes in abortion law (to wit, making most of them illegal). Credible estimates show that the legalization of abortion in 1973 caused the rate of abortion to increase between 200% and 400%. Simply put, abortion laws do make a difference.

"Credible estimates show that the legalization of abortion in 1973 caused the rate of abortion to increase between 200% and 400%. Simply put, abortion laws do make a difference."

Credible studies also show that where social safety net spending is increased abortions have decreased. I appreciate your statement supporting such spending. I wish more in the mainline pro-life movement shared your view.

The message of many on the Pro-Choice side is, and always was, that various lives aren't worth living. ....for me American Liberals often seemed to be based in the idea some people are problems. Poverty is a problem to be solved by any means necessary. This makes it more like a puzzle, or a disease, than something that describes the lives of real people.

Pretty lame comment. First, it ignores the fact that there are lots and lots of groups that work directly in poor communities. Many of these are run by liberals who do interact quite directly with the people they're helping.

To the extent that policymakers treat poverty more abstractly, as a "problem to be solved," that's because it is -- and in a big, complex society, addressing any issue through public policy necessarily means dealing with it in the aggregate. Of course, it's a good thing if policymakers also have a felt sense of the people whose lives their policies affect (I believe I heard someone quoted recently saying essentially this -- some judge named "Sonia" something, I think it was), but does anyone believe that conservative policymakers have a better felt sense of the lives of the poor than liberals? Um, right, when exactly was the last time John Boehner or Michael Steele or Rush Limbaugh was spotted working a soup kitchen?

Of course, suggesting that the pro-choice argument is that some lives aren't worth living is just a stupid smear -- but if that's the game we're playing, remind me: How many inarguably innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed in that ridiculous war the neocons trumped up for us? Hundreds of thousands, right? So, which was it -- did conservative supporters of that war believe that those lives weren't worth living? Or did they merely think of those people as an abstraction whose lives are among those least like their own, and therefore see them as dispensible in pursuit of some other alleged good? I guess when it comes to war-making, conservatives suddenly start thinking like liberals?

freelunch,

For what it's worth, to alleviate your ignorant bigotry, I could care less what the state of US law regarding abortion is, either way. I want to see such a barbaric practise beneath human dignity to end. So take your control-freak stereotypes and peddle them somewhere else.

She bemoaned that if certain people had their way, there'd be no abortion. She bemoaned the possibility that abortions might cease. She's a pro-abort. Period, end of story.

And I'll lay odds you are too. Let me ask you this, since I have no burning interest in ending the practise under law, as opposed to educating the hearts of people such that the practice ends completely, will you join me in calling it a barbaric practise beneath human dignity?

No?

Alright, pro-abort.

I'm still flabbergasted that of all the things Obama wants to go into debt for, HE DECIDES THAT KILLING CHILDREN ABROAD with our tax dollars is SO worth racking up new national debt for. He's a bit mad, methinks.

Your blog comments are right on, and also bring to my mind China. Similar to the reduction in the black community, due to abortion, China is experiencing a very unbalanced population due to their "genocide" in which MILLIONS of unborn baby girls have been aborted. Sadly, China enforces forced abortions in many cases as a means of population control... which just boggles my mind and saddens my heart.

Abortion isn't just a U.S. problem. It's a problem throughout the world and will become even moreso now that Obmama is President. He already reversed the "Mexico City Policy" and currently he has created the "Office for Global Women's Issues" headed by Hillary Clinton, and currently they are trying to pass the Foreign Relations Reauthorization Act (HR 2410) which will greatly enable and empower Clinton to be able to basically promote abortion around the world.

Obama has also promised to sign FOCA, which will be an outrage, although all of the above is also outrageous. But it never ceases to amaze me that pro-choicers and liberals justify abortion and seem to be in denial to the fact that huge populations of children, such as in America's black community and in China, have been reduced due to abortion.

According to the latest news, many young people today are more pro-life than before, and much of this is due to the fact that they have seen their own sonograms (saved by their mothers) and they acknowledge and realize that there was a baby in the womb that could've been aborted. They also realize that many lives of their generation were aborted. They have lost brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, and peers to abortion.

Those who are pro-choice argue that abortion is not murder because it's a fetus that is being aborted. But NO ONE in their right mind can deny that an abortion keeps the fetus from growing into a living, breathing human being and abortion stops life from developing as God intended it to. And that is exactly why there are populations, such as the black community, China's females, and today's youth... that are smaller than they should be due to abortion.

So, Thomas, "war often kills people on a massive scale" is a cliche. I see. Well, sorry for not being more original. I think the world would be better if policymakers bore that particular cliche in mind a little more often, though.

But OK, if you don't like the Iraq example, how about Kosovo? The Clinton and Blair administrations moved to stop a genocide in progress. Unlike Bush a few years later, they calculated correctly that this could be done with a low number of casualties, i.e. that the benefits truly would outweigh the costs. They succeeded. American conservatives complained bitterly. I guess they thought the Kosovar Muslims' lives weren't worth living?

The point is, it's ridiculous to ascribe the view that "some lives aren't worth living" specifically to liberals or liberalism. You think conservatives are not implicated in policy decisions that have the effect of trading off people's lives? If so, you must not read the papers or own a TV.

I'm still flabbergasted that of all the things Obama wants to go into debt for, HE DECIDES THAT KILLING CHILDREN ABROAD with our tax dollars is SO worth racking up new national debt for.

Similar point: Michele, do you have any idea how much debt the Bush administration ran up in the course of killing Iraqi children? (And I mean actual children, you know, born people. Also their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.) Hey, those cluster bombs and fuel-air explosives aren't cheap, you know.

CharlesFosterKane said: "does anyone believe that conservative policymakers have a better felt sense of the lives of the poor than liberals? Um, right, when exactly was the last time John Boehner or Michael Steele or Rush Limbaugh was spotted working a soup kitchen?"

What makes you think liberals have a "better felt sense of the lives of the poor?" I mean, honestly... you really truly believe that liberals are more in tune with the poor and more perceptive to their needs? Yah, all us conservatives are just a bunch of uncaring, unloving, cold, stingy, ungenerous, horrible people who according to you, kill children in wars and don't care about the poor. Maybe you'd be happy if all conservatives were just wiped off the face of the earth.

I don't understand people like you who claim to be about social justice, etc. but yet you also are very prejudiced against others (conservatives) and you stereotype them and condemn them as being less than you... less kind, less giving, less generous, etc. You (and some of the other conservative-haters who post here) make these broad, sweeping statements in which you show your prejudiceness and disdain for them, and why you even post here is beyond me other than that you like to argue and you like to bash conservatives as you try to convince us that liberals are more kind, more caring, and more giving.

But yet it's your own prejudiceness, as well as the prejudiceness of many other liberals, that proves this just isn't true.

Ashleigh, for Pete's sake, I was answering someone else's point, namely this:

The message of many on the Pro-Choice side is, and always was, that various lives aren't worth living. ....for me American Liberals often seemed to be based in the idea some people are problems. Poverty is a problem to be solved by any means necessary. This makes it more like a puzzle, or a disease, than something that describes the lives of real people.

And you say that I "stereotype [opponents] and condemn them as being less than" me? Yeah, right.

As to your creative reinterpration of the criticisms of Obama: First, which of last year's candidates harped most incessantly on how decades-old experience qualified him to run the country? It wasn't Obama. And you obviously didn't really hear what was said last year about Obama's work in poor communities; it wasn't just about inexperience, but open sneering at the idea of community organizing as a worthy activity at all. (Granted, the GOP saw the big can of whup-ass that Obama was about to open up on them, and they were flailing around for anything that might stick. But even so, people like Palin and Giuliani seemed plenty comfortable giving the impression that working with the poor was somehow trivial or stupid, if not vaguely subversive.)

Doctor Science,

I'm pro-life (in most cases) and pro-contraception. I think that the Pill and other hormonal methods are fully morally acceptable and should be promoted and made accessible to anyone who wants them, though I do think natural family planning should also be promoted.

I personally have some moral concerns with barrier methods* but I still think they should be legal and easily (cheaply) available to anyone who is unwilling to use abstinence, hormonal methods, or natural family planning. Whatever you think of condoms, they are certainly better than abortion. Among people under 18, I would prefer abstinence, but I realize that other options also need to be taught and made cheaply and freely avaible.

*Although a recent study shows that failure rates of condoms under 'typical use' are quite high, comparable to 'coitus interruptus'....

Um, well, excuse me, but the preborn are "actual" children. Birth is not what makes a person "actual", conception creates a unique human being, actually.

OK, Herman, you're excused.

I agree that conception creates a unique human zygote. But I guess your view that it creates a human being explains why the pro-life movement believes in holding funerals and inquests for every miscarriage, in treating attempts at in-vitro fertilization as murder-for-hire conspiracies, and in prosecuting women who get abortions (and everyone who assists them) for a capital crime. Right? You do believe in all that, right? Because surely the death of any "unique human being" demands no less.

Doctor Science,

I'm not totally convinced. How necessary, and therefore justifiable, do you think it is to cut moral corners in situations that could have been avoided altogether in many cases?