Women's Reproductive Rights

Washington DC Mayor Vince Gray along with a number of City Councilmen were arrested on Monday for protesting the budget deal which eliminates the city’s right to use local tax dollars to help low-income women access reproductive healthcare. The Family Research Council responded by saying that Gray and other pro-choice officials were actually responsible for the falling black population in the city. The Washington Post reports that recent census data shows that African Americans will soon make up less than 50% of the city’s population, “with the city’s black population dropping by about 1 percent a year.” Analysts point to rising unemployment and the city’s rapid gentrification with “rising rents and soaring property taxes” pushing much of the working class black community out of the city.

But the Family Research Council says the real reason is legal abortion. Adding to the anti-choice movement’s strategy of claiming that abortion providers are trying to commit genocide against African Americans, the FRC said in an email alert to members that the city’s declining black community is because “the local Planned Parenthood clinics are doing their job.” While the FRC uses no evidence to back up its claim that Planned Parenthood “actively targets African-Americans” and is responsible for the city’s loss of black residents, the group also spews out false, discredited claims that the women’s health organization is tied to “child prostitution, sex abuse, [and] statutory rape”:

According to pundits, this was supposed to be the year that social issues took a backseat to the economy. Apparently, Democrats didn't get the memo. If the last six weeks proved anything, it's that the culture war is alive and well--and lurking in the halls of Congress. When the dust finally settled from last week's budget talks, Americans learned that it wasn't conservatives with a one-track mind. It was the White House and Senate leadership, who thought it was worth putting more than 800,000 people out of work to satisfy the single-issue abortion supporters in their ranks. "Thanks to the way this deal was struck," the Wall Street Journal says, "we have a reminder that it was the Democratic President--and not the Republican Speaker--who stood on ideology." To those inside the Oval Office, "...it was 'chilling' to see how inflexible Mr. Obama was." But as far as liberals are concerned, an attack on abortion is an attack on the Democratic Party. D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray (D) obviously thought so. He was so angry about the ban on taxpayer-funded abortion in the District that he and 41 others plopped down in the middle of Constitution Avenue yesterday to protest. "The District restrictions that were part of the budget deal reached Friday were unacceptable," Gray said, after he was hauled away by Capitol police. "It's an outrageous position... All we want is to be able to spend our own money." Like his party, the Mayor was willing to stand in the way of progress at a major crossroads to protect taxpayer-funded abortion.

And for what? According to the latest D.C. census, the number of African-Americans in the city is alarmingly low. In one decade, "the black population dropped by more than 39,000." Experts say the percentages haven't been this low since World War II. Do liberals think that's a coincidence? Obviously, the local Planned Parenthood clinics are doing their job. So while Vincent Gray rages on about taxation without abortion representation, he should stop and consider where his city would be in another 10 years without the legislation. If you thought that black children were endangered before, imagine if the city could continue promoting free abortions to local women.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood, the group that most actively targets African-Americans, is awaiting its federal funding fate. As part of the budget compromise, President Obama agreed to give the Senate a vote on language to zero out Planned Parenthood's tax dollars. "Surely it tells you something about who the real extremists are that an up-or-down vote is deemed a 'concession,'" William McGurn wrote. Help your members take advantage of the opportunity. Contact your Senators and remind them that there are plenty of legitimate health clinics out there that will provide services to women other than abortion. And 99% of them probably haven't been implicated in child prostitution, sex abuse, or statutory rape!

In early February Right Wing Watch reported on a bill in Arizona that would make it a felony for women from having abortions if the decision to terminate the pregnancy was based on race or sex. Yesterday, Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law, allowing the biological father or the woman’s parents to sue abortion providers for damages if the doctor knowingly conducting the procedure on race or sex grounds:

Arizona is the first state in the nation to make sex- or race-selection abortions a crime.

Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday signed into law House Bill 2443, which makes it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion based on the sex or race of the fetus.

…

Rep. Katie Hobbs, D-Phoenix, said the only proof Montenegro offered was a magazine article on such practices in China and India.

The law allows the father of an aborted fetus - or, if the mother is a minor, the mother's parents - to take legal action against the doctor or other health-care provider who performed the abortion. If convicted of the felony, physicians would face up to seven years in jail and the loss of their medical license.

The law is a result of a right-wing campaign to smear abortion providers, notably Planned Parenthood, for allegedly targeting women of color in order to commit “genocide” against the African American community. Anti-choice groups have launched billboard campaigns using images of black children and President Obama, publicized the discredited “documentary” Maafa 21, and organized “Freedom Rides” against abortion-rights.

Susan Cohen of the Guttmacher Institute explains how activists who want to take away women’s reproductive rights are twisting the facts about abortion in minority communities. As Cohen explains, African American women’s disproportionate lack of access to contraception and healthcare has led not only to higher rates of unintended pregnancies but also to higher rates of sexually transmitted infections:

These activists are exploiting and distorting the facts to serve their antiabortion agenda. They ignore the fundamental reason women have abortions and the underlying problem of racial and ethnic disparities across an array of health indicators. The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. This applies to all women—black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American alike. Not surprisingly, the variation in abortion rates across racial and ethnic groups relates directly to the variation in the unintended pregnancy rates across those same groups.

Black women are not alone in having disproportionately high unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. The abortion rate among Hispanic women, for example, although not as high as the rate among black women, is double the rate among whites. Hispanics also have a higher level of unintended pregnancy than white women. Black women's unintended pregnancy rates are the highest of all. These higher unintended pregnancy rates reflect the particular difficulties that many women in minority communities face in accessing high-quality contraceptive services and in using their chosen method of birth control consistently and effectively over long periods of time. Moreover, these realities must be seen in a larger context in which significant racial and ethnic disparities persist for a wide range of health outcomes, from diabetes to heart disease to breast and cervical cancer to sexually transmitted infections (STI), including HIV.

At a typical Randall Terry press conference one can expect to hear all sorts of overheated rhetoric about abortion – that it’s murder, that abortion clinics are places of "mass genocide," and so forth. But in recent weeks, he has amped up his rhetoric to insane new heights over the healthcare legislation before Congress, which he claims would pay for “child-killing.”

Earlier this week Terry called for the rejection of the bill and warned of "violent convulsions" of a level that hasn't been seen since the Civil War if the bill is passed

At today’s press conference, however, Terry was quick to point out that he has supposedly been a "non-violent" leader for 25 years, and he ridiculed those who accuse him and other right-wing leaders of "stirring up domestic terrorism”:

But when Terry predicted the consequences of passing the bill, he seemed to exalt in warning of “random acts of violence” and violent "reprisals against those deemed guilty":

We, for one, think it’s absolutely right to connect the dots between violent rhetoric and violent acts. 

To end on a lighter vote, if that’s possible, here is a clip of Terry doing his best impersonation of what I assume he would call a "whiny liberal":