“Black Children Are an Endangered Species” is a statement that is appearing on 80 billboards of different sizes in the African American neighborhoods of metro Atlanta. The face of a frightened child is seen on the billboards. These signs emerged in January and are expected to come down at the end of March.
On March 9, the pro-choice web site RH Reality Check held a news conference to refute charges that abortion clinics were targeting black women.
Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice-president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, maintains that the people behind the billboard campaign want to destroy Planned Parenthood within the African American community. She says that if they succeed in Georgia, they will use the same tactics across the country.
Ryan Bomberger of the Radiance Foundation, the group that designed the billboards, has said that pro-life activists in 10 other states and the District of Columbia want to sponsor the billboards. According to Diane Loupe of WOMENSENEWS, the source for this article, the statistic at the center of this controversy is the fact that black women are four to five times as likely to have an abortion as white women.
Carol Rowland, professor of epidemiology at Emory University near Atlanta, said that the reason for that higher rate of abortion is that black women have a higher rate of unintended pregnancies.
Catherine Davis is director of minority outreach for Georgia Right to Life, a predominantly white group that spent $20,000 to sponsor the billboards, (that figure is according to the Radiance Foundation.) Davis says that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are targeting the black community. Davis’ group maintains that abortion accomplishes what the Ku Klux Klan could only hope for – and that is the extermination of black people. What incendiary, dangerous talk! Not only is it outrageous, but it reeks of ignorance and a medieval thought process. I wonder what kind of education Ms. Davis and her fellow Georgia Right to Lifers have had.
Presently, Georgia Right to Life and other anti-abortion people are pushing a bill in the state legislature that would forbid abortion providers from targeting black communities or performing abortions based on a child’s race or sex. Do abortion providers actually do that targeting, and that race and sex selection? Not to my knowledge.
Loretta Ross, national coordinator of SisterSong, a pro-choice group, is lobbying to stop the bill. She said, “It is very hard to persuade African American women in the city of Atlanta that this legislation-headlined by rural white Republicans-is aimed at saving black families.”