“There is only one thing I would like to be in touch with you about: the Negro Project of the South…We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. And the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
- Margaret Sanger, December 10, 1939, in a letter written to Dr. Clarence James Gamble.
I met my husband 26 years ago on a blind date.
When he stood up, I thought I might fall down.
He is 6’9” and is as handsome as he is kind.
Fast forward from that blind date to a sunny spring evening.
We’d crowded around my mother-in-law’s table. It was just before our nearly grown children flew the coop.
Before Emmy was married. Before Wesley headed out for school. Before Will went to college. Before Molly could drive.
That night, our kids swapped stories from their elementary school days, fueled by Charlotte’s legendary sweet tea. Three full cups of cane sugar, no doubt.
They interrupted each other and finally 'fessed up about who did what when they were little. About who wrote on the wall. And the furniture.
I hoped they couldn’t see my expression. Although my husband tells me, and I’m paraphrasing here, that I’m about as subtle as a highway billboard, lit up at night.
Still, that evening, my heart felt like it would explode with joy.
That night, we were a noisy family of six, enjoying the calm before the storms of life raged. All of us, deeply indebted to a brave teen.
Based on statistics alone, I know that things for me - my birth mom is White, my birth father was Black - could have turned out differently.
Too often, for Black babies, they do.
Since 1973, there are an estimated 20 million Black babies missing from the face of the earth. Each unique life targeted by abortion.
Black children are aborted 3-5 times more than White children in the US.
Minority neighborhoods house 79% of abortion clinics.
There are more Black abortions in New York City than live births.
In Alabama, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 30% of White women and 62% of Black women will abort their children.
Which means that on this earth, their laughter won’t echo.
Their swings won’t move.
Their “could-have-been” families will never crowd around the dinner table to swap stories.
Nationally, Black women terminate pregnancies at far higher rates than other women. In 2014, 36% of all abortions were performed on Black women, just 13% of the female population. The little-discussed flip side of “reproductive freedom” is that abortion deaths far exceed those via cancer, violent crime, heart disease, AIDS and accidents. Racism, poverty and lack of access to health care are the typical explanations for these disparities. But Black women have much higher abortion rates even after controlling for income. Moreover, other low-income ethnic minorities who experience discrimination, such as Hispanics, abort at rates much closer to White women than Black women.
What impact does this have?
From Arthur Goldberg in the Public Discourse:
These abortion numbers have curtailed population increases in the African-American community. Michael Novak calculated in 2002 that without the incidence of abortion, the African-American population would show at least a 36-percent increase. Even this number does not consider the number of children who may have been born to those who were aborted.
That’s a staggering thought.
So. How did we get here?
Because of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger.
In promoting birth control, she advanced a controversial “Negro Project,” wrote in her autobiography about speaking to a Ku Klux Klan group and advocated for a "eugenics approach" to breeding for “the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction of defective stocks – those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”
This is Planned Parenthood’s legacy.
And it’s ripped the fabric of our country to shreds.
From the beginning, the abortion industry targeted then exterminated 20 million Black children - 62 million in total.
Why does this matter?
Because I want you to know about the hideous eugenic roots of abortion in this country.
I want you to know that Black children pay a steep price; all of our pre-born children do.
And, I want to ask a simple question of those of you who’ve said that there are more than life issues to worry about.
To make that statement, don’t you have to be alive first?
And don’t you think that the 20 million Black babies, 62 million babies in total, wish they could say that, too?
Amie Beth Shaver is a speaker, writer, and media commentator. Her column appears every Wednesday in 1819 News. Shaver served on the Alabama GOP State Executive Committee, was a candidate for State House 43 and spokeswoman for Allied Women. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com
