Aborting Colored Babies

[Yeahman]

You've probably heard of William Bennett's comment a while back that aborting black babies would reduce crime. He wasn't actually endorsing abortion but was trying to use that as an argument against it. But I came across someone who did believe we should abort blacks for the sake of aborting blacks.

"The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And 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 (founder of the American Birth Control League, later Planned Parenthood)

On a number of occasions Sanger talked about Catholics as being a threat to America (and she spoke as if Catholics were not Americans).

Founding board member of the ADCL, Lothrop Stoddard, wrote "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy" about the threat of a growing colored population. He includes "yellows."

The other founding board member, CC Little, founded the "Third Race Betterment Conference" dedicated to the preservation of the white race.

The founding members of what was later renamed to Planned Parenthood, were all strong supporters of eugenics. To their credit, they believed that it should be voluntary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Birth_Control_League
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothrop_Stoddard


I'm not saying that Planned Parenthood is racist today. They are not but there is no doubt that they founding was rooted in a racist desire to keep minorities as minorities.

These days in school kids learn that Washington and Jefferson were slaveowners till the day they died. They learn that Columbus extermined natives. But the historical reexamination hasn't reached other figures. In school I was taught that Margaret Sanger fought valiantly for women's rights. I didn't know about the other stuff.

[thaite]

Really? I thought it Sanger/Planned Parenthood roots were pretty common knowledge.

[Yeahman]

A couple of comments from the Washington Post on the Bennett controversy.

"African American women, who make up only 13% of the US female population, accounted for 32% of the 1,293,000 abortions performed in the United States in 2002,” Milloy wrote. “That's 413,760 abortions performed on black women in one year — or 1,133 a day. (In the District [of Columbia], half of all pregnancies ended in abortion, a higher percentage than in any state.) No outcry over that because those were just disposable fetuses, right? That is, until Bennett spoke of aborting ‘black babies,’ and suddenly those fetuses become precious pre-born black people who must be saved from the evil Dr. Bill."

"If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?"

And a satirical take on "abortion as a racial control mechanism":
www.klanparenthood.com

And a more serious take:
www.blackgenocide.org
Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Blacks were lynched in the U.S. That number is surpassed in less than 3 days by abortion.

[Chu Chi]

These days in school kids learn that Washington and Jefferson were slaveowners till the day they died. They learn that Columbus extermined natives.


Yeah, but they don't learn it in a way that matters.

And the reason is the LANGUAGE used to describe them.

Instead of refering to Washington and Jefferson as "slaveowners", refer to them as WHITE SUPREMACISTS.

Anybody can be a "slave owner", but only a White person can be a White supremacist.


When you describe Christopher Columbus as a White supremacist, his behavior becomes clear, even for children.

Children need the correct term and definition, otherwise everything else they learn will confuse them.

I know cause I was one of em.



CC

[draconisz]

I don't really get your point Ye110man. There isn't a whole lot of options for "Black" women who have unwanted pregnancies. It doesn't matter if we use adoption, abortion, birth control, or abstinence. Unwanted teenage pregnancies in the African-American community must decrease. To let the streets raise children is to invite more violence and more crime in poorer communities.

I am not sure what these facts have to do with folks who want to commit genocide against "Black" people.



A couple of comments from the Washington Post on the Bennett controversy.

"African American women, who make up only 13% of the US female population, accounted for 32% of the 1,293,000 abortions performed in the United States in 2002,” Milloy wrote. “That's 413,760 abortions performed on black women in one year — or 1,133 a day. (In the District [of Columbia], half of all pregnancies ended in abortion, a higher percentage than in any state.) No outcry over that because those were just disposable fetuses, right? That is, until Bennett spoke of aborting ‘black babies,’ and suddenly those fetuses become precious pre-born black people who must be saved from the evil Dr. Bill."

"If it's unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?"

And a satirical take on "abortion as a racial control mechanism":
www.klanparenthood.com

And a more serious take:
www.blackgenocide.org
Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Blacks were lynched in the U.S. That number is surpassed in less than 3 days by abortion.

[Faithless]

Some catholic voices with a little more reason:

Book Club Leads A Few Roman Catholics To Middle Road In Abortion Debate -- They choose to focus energy on mother, not on politics of abortion (http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=838df85b-a93f-4b87-b3a1-9f18458401e8)

Martin said she doesn't want to overturn Roe v. Wade. Rather, she wants to pursue initiatives that will encourage women not to abort their pregnancies.

“Guess what?” said Martin. “If you just overturn Roe v. Wade, you're going back 30 years, you're not going forward ... Rather than setting the bar at a political level, I'd like to go higher, and touch the moral level.”

By BETHE DUFRESNE | Religion reporter/Columnist | Published on 1/23/2006

New London — Arthur Joyce and Lisa Martin, both “pro-lifers” in the vernacular of the abortion debate, each had an epiphany when they read “Real Choices” as members of a fall book club at St. Mary Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church.

Subtitled “Listening to Women; Looking for Alternatives to Abortion,” Frederica Mathewes-Green's book proposes to replace condemnation of doctors and women with listening to women and then giving them the support they need to carry their pregnancies to birth.

Led by St. Mary's pastor, the Rev. Robert Washabaugh, the book club of eight has resolved to go forth individually and put the book's ideas into action.

The author posits that mentoring, helping with adoption, and giving financial and emotional assistance would do more to curtail abortions than parading pictures of dismembered fetuses and calling abortion murder.

“I'm not saying we don't have an agenda,” said Martin, a 36-year-old bilingual fourth-grade teacher at the city's Winthrop Elementary School. But “Real Choices,” written by a former pro-choice woman like Martin herself, seems to her to offer a less combative, more compassionate means of carrying out that agenda.

Interviews with Joyce and Martin illustrate what's often said, that while Catholic teaching opposes all abortions as well as any artificial birth control, all Catholics aren't of one mind on this most divisive of all social issues.

Sunday night, the 70-year-old Joyce, known as “Bud,” planned to board a bus with other Roman Catholics from the region and head to Washington, D.C., for today's protest against the Jan. 22, 1973, Supreme Court decision affirming a woman's right to abortion.

“I still feel I've got one more shot,” he said last week, to weigh in on the Roe v. Wade decision, which is still hailed, reviled and debated more than 30 years later. His 66-year-old wife, Lillian, has two artificial knees, which is keeping her at home in Waterford.

Martin was to fly home to New London this evening after attending a week-long bilingual education conference in Arizona. But even if she could join today's protest in D.C., it's not a choice she would make.

“I wouldn't say it's wrong for anybody to do that,” said Martin. “But I wouldn't want to concentrate my energy on that.”

Martin said she doesn't want to overturn Roe v. Wade. Rather, she wants to pursue initiatives that will encourage women not to abort their pregnancies.

“Guess what?” said Martin. “If you just overturn Roe v. Wade, you're going back 30 years, you're not going forward ... Rather than setting the bar at a political level, I'd like to go higher, and touch the moral level.”

Unlike Martin, Bud Joyce doesn't eschew the politics of abortion. But, like her, he's resolved to focus on the personal.

After reading “Real Choices,” Joyce and his wife, who have six grown children, said they've decided to work with counseling agencies and offer to open up their home to a pregnant woman in need. They'll stick by her through the birth, and beyond, if she needs it. Mathewes-Green calls this “shepherding.”

For Joyce, the only man in the book club besides Washabaugh, this is a major change in attitude.

“Before I read the book, I wasn't as much thinking about the woman as I was the child,” he said. “But the book brought out in chapter after chapter that these poor women are making a decision by themselves. It's terrible.”

“Many times the male partner has up and left them,” said Joyce, “or their parents were upset. It made me think ... and feel more compassion for the woman, that we should do more to help her.”

Lillian Joyce, also a book club member, acknowledged that the church's stand against most forms of birth control can put Catholics in a tough position.

As volunteer counselors for couples planning to marry in the church, the Joyces routinely offer to provide information about natural family planning, or timing sexual intercourse according to a woman's most or least fertile periods.

In 15 years as counselors, said Bud Joyce, not once has a couple taken them up on this.

The Joyces said they support the church's stance. “For us it kind of worked,” Bud Joyce said. “We wanted a large family. But it's a hard system to follow, I'll admit that.”

If the church ever changed its stance to allow other means of birth control, he'd go along with that, he said, “in a minute.”

Lillian Joyce agreed. While she's never questioned the church's stance on abortion, she said, and like her husband wants Roe v. Wade overturned, “I've never quite understood” the church's stance on birth control.

Martin grew up in West Virginia in a family that was nominally Baptist but not observant. She marched with the National Organization for Women (NOW) to protect abortion rights while she was still a student in the late 1980s. Always curious about religion and concerned about faith, she discovered Catholicism as an adult, during a trip to Spain.

She had already converted to Catholicism when she met her future husband, John Martin, a New London High School teacher who was raised a Catholic and belongs to the Knights of Columbus, Seaside Council 17.

On Jan. 6 the council helped dedicate a granite monument to the unborn, which they had commissioned, on the lawn at St. Mary's Church. The Bishop of Norwich, Michael R. Cote, officiated, along with Washabaugh.

Washabaugh said he started the “Real Choices” book discussion while “searching for a Catholic response to the (abortion) dilemma that would seem more complete.”

It was one of Washabaugh's homilies, said Martin, that convinced her all life is sacred. Then “Real Choices” showed her what to do about it. She plans to work with agencies like CareNet Pregnancy Resource Center, which has an office in Groton, that help facilitate the choice to carry pregnancies to term.

“If a woman is bound and determined to have an abortion, I'm not going to say, ‘You can't do this.' I want to help those who want the help,” Martin said.

“I don't want to offend my faith,” she said. “But there is a middle road, and that middle road is compassion for the woman making the choice.”

[Yeahman]

I don't really get your point Ye110man. There isn't a whole lot of options for "Black" women who have unwanted pregnancies. It doesn't matter if we use adoption, abortion, birth control, or abstinence. Unwanted teenage pregnancies in the African-American community must decrease. To let the streets raise children is to invite more violence and more crime in poorer communities.

I am not sure what these facts have to do with folks who want to commit genocide against "Black" people.
So you agree with William Bennett; aborting black babies would reduce crime.

[Dei Wong]

So you agree with William Bennett; aborting black babies would reduce crime.

I doubt that is what he meant.

[draconisz]

Aborting any "Black" baby???? Oh, you mean like if Will Smith has another child with Jada. . .I am saying they should abort it?

Neo-cons need to figure out what their own point is.

Any child that is unwanted be they "Black", "White", Asian, or otherwise will more than likely grow up to be dysfunctional. Facts are facts. . .if a child is on the street, they won't be learning much about getting an education, finding a job, or becoming a productive citizen. The ghetto is a dangerous place for a child to grow up even with both parents.

"Black" people, (I am not saying that you have any responsibility in this) have hard decisions to make. If we are not willing to take these children in, we must face facts. The first fact, is that we (meaning "Black" people) haven't given that girl/woman many options.

But I can't explain this to you. Just like I don't understand fully all of the issues/concerns of those within the Asian-American community. . .perhaps you are just one of those Asian-Americans who doesn't know much about the experience in "Black" ghettos.

The rest of you please understand, these problems are ones of culture. Of course, there are other communities facing similar issues. And I have no problems working with those communities, but that isn't Ye11oman's point.


So you agree with William Bennett; aborting black babies would reduce crime.

[Dei Wong]

Aborting any "Black" baby???? Oh, you mean like if Will Smith has another child with Jada. . .I am saying they should abort it?

Neo-cons need to figure out what their own point is.

Any child that is unwanted be they "Black", "White", Asian, or otherwise will more than likely grow up to be dysfunctional. Facts are facts. . .if a child is on the street, they won't be learning much about getting an education, finding a job, or becoming a productive citizen. The ghetto is a dangerous place for a child to grow up even with both parents.

"Black" people, (I am not saying that you have any responsibility in this) have hard decisions to make. If we are not willing to take these children in, we must face facts. The first fact, is that we (meaning "Black" people) haven't given that girl/woman many options.

But I can't explain this to you. Just like I don't understand fully all of the issues/concerns of those within the Asian-American community. . .perhaps you are just one of those Asian-Americans who doesn't know much about the experience in "Black" ghettos.

The rest of you please understand, these problems are ones of culture. Of course, there are other communities facing similar issues. And I have no problems working with those communities, but that isn't Ye11oman's point.

Ghettos are a social conundrum few are willing to tackle most don't care to. Thought these individuals represent a small percent of the African American population (26%). Withover exposure in the media, common fear, and just plain ignorance causes the group to be judge in one broad stroke. Asinine ideas like the one we are discussing are some of the many shitheaded solutions that are being brought to the table. You are very right it is culture thing something we as a people neeed confront. But race doesn't make someone bad or a crimminal. The ghetto is an environment harsh enough to influence anyone behavior toward crime or cause them to lash out at others. Some are trying to better themselves and their situations. I think that idea aimed at race is stupid.

[draconisz]

I am not sure if you are agree or agreeing with my points.

Ghettos are a social conundrum few are willing to tackle most don't care to. Thought these individuals represent a small percent of the African American population (26%). Withover exposure in the media, common fear, and just plain ignorance causes the group to be judge in one broad stroke. Asinine ideas like the one we are discussing are some of the many shitheaded solutions that are being brought to the table. You are very right it is culture thing something we as a people neeed confront. But race doesn't make someone bad or a crimminal. The ghetto is an environment harsh enough to influence anyone behavior toward crime or cause them to lash out at others. Some are trying to better themselves and their situations. I think that idea aimed at race is stupid.

[Dei Wong]

Any child that is unwanted be they "Black", "White", Asian, or otherwise will more than likely grow up to be dysfunctional. Facts are facts. . .if a child is on the street, they won't be learning much about getting an education, finding a job, or becoming a productive citizen. The ghetto is a dangerous place for a child to grow up even with both parents.

I agree with this most of all. Sorry if I was unclear.

[draconisz]

Understood. Thanks!

Any child that is unwanted be they "Black", "White", Asian, or otherwise will more than likely grow up to be dysfunctional. Facts are facts. . .if a child is on the street, they won't be learning much about getting an education, finding a job, or becoming a productive citizen. The ghetto is a dangerous place for a child to grow up even with both parents.

I agree with this most of all. Sorry if I was unclear.