Billboards Claim Abortion Industry Targets Blacks
Black children are an endangered species, say billboards throughout Atlanta.
The new campaign sends out a blunt message but organizers behind the project want Georgians to know about "the holocaustic impact" abortion has had on the black community not just in the state but across the country.
Since 1973 more than 14 million black babies have died by abortion. Though African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they have the highest abortion rate in the country. Nearly 40 percent of all pregnancies among black women end in induced abortion.
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"I want to communicate to the African-American community that the African-American womb has become the most dangerous place to be for a baby," the Rev. Clenard Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.org, said earlier.
Today, abortion kills more African-Americans, per year, than heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease, accidents, homicides, and suicide combined, according to the campaign.
"It is a human crisis," according to the Endangered Species Project.
"Sanger's birth control plan is succeeding," a promotion video for the project states, as it cites the late founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, who once said, "There is no doubt that procreation of this group should be stopped."
The project is a collaborative effort between The Radiance Foundation and Georgia Right to Life. It was developed by Ryan Bomberger, co-founder of The Radiance Foundation and an Emmy Award-winning Creative Professional, who is a child of rape.
More than 60 billboards have been erected in Georgia, which is a leading state in the number of reported abortions performed on black women. In 2008, more than half (58 percent) of the 36,094 abortions in the state were performed on African-Americans. Blacks comprise only 30 percent of the Georgia population.
The project has drawn criticism from abortion advocates.
Leola Reis, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Georgia, told The Associated Press, "The language in the billboard is using messages of fear and shame to target women of color. If we want to reduce the number of abortions and unintended pregnancies, we need to work as a community to make sure we get quality affordable health care services to as many women and men as possible."
But the campaign, which leads people to TooManyAborted.com, is not intended to target black women, Bomberger told The New York Times. Rather, "it's a campaign that exposes an industry that we believe targets African-Americans."
"This isn't black versus white, or a me versus you. It's the truth versus the lie," the project website states.
Dispelling some of the lies the campaign claims are being spread by the abortion industry, organizers argue that the racial disparity of abortion cannot be explained by a lack of access to contraceptive services or healthcare. Most sexual and reproductive health care clinics are located within or minutes away from black neighborhoods, they contend. And Hispanics are uninsured at a far higher rate than any other race yet their national abortion total is half of that of blacks.
Additionally, the claim that African-Americans can't afford condoms or oral contraceptives at their local stores and pharmacies or that they are too unaware to know to get birth control at a local clinic is another myth, the campaign maintains. "[S]omehow, they manage to find these clinics to have an abortion. So, the money's there for abortion (which is considered 'access') but not for a pill or a condom?"
"It's outrageous (and intellectually insulting) to suggest that the problem is lack of access."
Lending his support earlier this month, state Rep. Barry Loudermilk introduced bipartisan legislation that targets racial disparity in abortion rates. The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, HB 1155, makes it illegal to knowingly perform, solicit or accept funding for either race- or sex-selection abortions.
The mission of the Endangered Species Project, as stated on its website, is to educate African-Americans about abortion's impact on the black community via accurate and documented statistics, historical perspectives, provocative videos, and personal testimonies, and to expose Planned Parenthood's propaganda and reveal the true intentions of this billion-dollar nonprofit organization.
