“There’s a Straight Line from U.S. Racial Segregation to the Anti-Abortion Movement.”
So reads a headline in the British newspaper, The Guardian. The article’s author, a professor at Dartmouth College, argues that defending racial segregation was the critical factor in the rise of the pro-life movement after the disastrous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
Such bizarre ideas defending abortion are increasingly common as the left contemplates the failings of the pro-abortion message.
The Centerpiece of Leftist Thought
When Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case was leaked, the left went into instant panic mode with good reason. It sees legal procured abortion as one of its few great triumphs. Pro-aborts have tried to enshrine the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade as “settled law.” They become very unsettled when this work is endangered.
Indeed, procured abortion will remain legal in many states, but it will no longer be untouchable as a “right” protected by the Constitution. If the Court overturns Roe, any state legislature could declare abortion illegal in their jurisdictions.
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Despite their rhetoric, the pro-abortion leaders don’t care about individual women or the ability to “choose.” Procured abortion represents the one area in which the left has imposed a radical standard upon all of the people of the United States by judicial fiat. In 1973, seven of nine justices declared abortion’s adversaries would just have to live with the murder of innocent life and that it was legal—more than legal—a highly symbolic “right.”
Acts of Desperation
Thus, the left is pulling out all of its artillery. The Secretary of the Treasury (and one-time federal reserve chairwoman) Janet Yellen told a Senate committee that “Roe v. Wade and access to reproductive health care including abortion helped lead to increased labor force participation.” That should settle the issue. What value do sixty-three million lives have compared to the rate of labor force participation?
Leftists in big business and corporate media are also jumping on board. Amazon promises to help its pregnant employees travel to states where abortion is legal. Leftist comedian Samantha Bee ominously predicted, “We know abortion rates won’t drop. The only difference is that people, especially people of color, especially people living in poverty, will die.” The Washington Post speculated on “The Tie Between the Buffalo Shooting and Banning Abortion.”
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The State of New York is considering a program that would pay for those who live in other places to travel to the Excelsior State to procure abortions. The New York Post quoted Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas (D-Queens) as saying, “That’s the goal of this bill—to ensure that everyone can get the care that they need no matter their [immigration] status or their socio-economic conditions, insurance status, all that.”
Is Saving Lives a Racist Act?
The left knows that accusation of racism is their biggest cannon, the one that shoots out dubious ideas fastest. Therefore, the radicals are bringing race into the abortion debate.
Their argument is simplistic—pro-lifers are closet racists who want to end abortion because they want to hurt black and brown people.
Consider this statement by University of California at Irvine Law Professor Michelle Goodwin.
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“Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men.”
Dubious Arguments
Professor Goodwin buttresses this point with two arguments. The first is that professional doctors replaced mostly-black midwives during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “[S]killed Black midwives represented both real competition for white men who sought to enter the practice of child delivery, and a threat to how obstetricians viewed themselves.”
The professional practice of obstetrics did gain ground at the expense of midwives near the turn of the twentieth century. However, Professor Goodwin’s analysis leaves out three important factors that have nothing to do with her affirmations. First, the movement of people into cities meant that professional medical care was nearer for many. Second, rural families were better able to obtain a doctor’s assistance at childbirth due to increased use of the telephone and the automobile. Third, and most importantly, medical standards—especially when it came to the spread of infection—improved considerably during that time.
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Professor Goodwin’s second point is that abortion is safer than full-term pregnancy and childbirth. An abortion, she states, “is as safe as a penicillin shot.” It is painfully apparent that Professor Goodwin omits any consideration of the child—for whom death is inevitable.
Closing Death Factories
Ushma Upadhyay, a “public health social scientist” at the University of California San Francisco, provides another reason to assert that the pro-life movement is racist. “The states that are most likely to ban abortion have much greater proportions of people of color. We also know that about 60% of people obtaining abortions are people of color.”
There is little reason to doubt Dr. Upadhyay’s statistics. However, her underlying premise that the desire to decrease the number of people of color is racist lacks coherence.
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Wouldn’t a committed racist want as many African-American women to have abortions as possible? Someone who thought that there are too many black and brown people on earth would be delighted to find a way to persuade those mothers to kill their babies. When a white teenager killed ten black shoppers at a Buffalo, New York supermarket on May 18, 2022, the media quickly and correctly labeled the shooter a racist. Why are they so reluctant to use the same label for a white abortionist who kills hundreds of African-American babies?
Abortion is Never the Solution
The answer is simple. For the left, abortion is a far more critical issue than “racial justice.” Its sorry attempt to wrap the mantle of racism around the pro-life movement proves this. Procured abortion has hurt the African-American community far more than any other ethnic group.
The real problem is the destruction of the family unit, which welcomes children as blessings, not obstructions to careers. Abortion is never a solution. Of course, that lesson is the last one that the left wants anyone to learn.