March for Life advocates 'equality' as abortion disproportionately impacts minorities

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On Friday, thousands of pro-lifers are expected to descend on Washington, D.C., as part of the March for Life, a demonstration claiming that one of the nation's founding principles – equality – "begins in the womb."

This year's theme comes just after Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a raging debate over what actual equality looks like in the U.S. The controversy has become especially tense in schools and businesses, where questions about inequality regularly surface. Debate has swirled over whether it means simply guaranteeing equal opportunity or eliminating systemic biases against races, ethnicities and other marginalized identities.

Regardless, rhetoric around systemic inequality – particularly systemic racism – has included arguments about abortion's disproportionate impact on minorities.

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Despite their lower population levels, non-Hispanic Black women accounted for the largest percentage of abortions (38%) in 2019, while non-Hispanic White women accounted for 33%. And compared to White women, "abortion rates and ratios were 3.6 and 3.3 times higher among non-Hispanic Black women and 1.8 and 1.5 times higher among Hispanic women," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. The agency has attributed this to "disparities in rates of unintended pregnancies, structural factors, including unequal access to quality family planning services … economic disadvantage, and distrust of the medical system."

Portrait of cute baby boy with Down syndrome on the bed in home bedroom. (iStock)

And out of 1,000 live Black births, 390 Black children were aborted in 2016, according to the CDC. The Guttmacher Institute, which previously functioned as the research arm of Planned Parenthood, similarly reported that Black, non-Hispanic women saw the highest abortion rate (27.1 per 1,000 women aged 15-44) in 2014, compared to other racial groups. That was nearly three times the rate of White abortions (10 per 1,000 women aged 15-44). 

It's difficult to obtain comprehensive data for abortions in response to genetic anomalies, but evidence points to even more lopsided proportions. The battle has played out at the state level as abortion providers have fought for abortion access, regardless of prenatal diagnosis. In 2019, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Indiana attempting to reinstate its Down syndrome abortion ban. However, the court's only Black justice, Clarence Thomas, authored an opinion in which he warned that abortion could be used as a tool for eugenics. 

"[A]bortion has proved to be a disturbingly effective tool for implementing the discriminatory preferences that undergird eugenics," he wrote. Those preferences extend to fetal sex as well. A 2019 study also argued that sex-selective abortion had created a gender imbalance in certain parts of the world with "23.1 million missing female births globally."

Abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion protesters demonstrate in front of the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Planned Parenthood hasn’t elaborated on how many of its 300,000-plus abortions every year are performed on Black mothers. Regardless, several analyses have shown that Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics in general tend to disproportionately find their way in or around Black neighborhoods. 

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The uneven abortion rates seemed to have impacted certain populations as a whole. In 2017, CBS noted that Iceland had almost eliminated Down syndrome as nearly 100% of women who received that prenatal diagnosis terminated their pregnancy. A 2015 study reportedly concluded the Down syndrome population in the U.S. was 30% lower than it would have been without abortions resulting from prenatal diagnoses. Another study similarly found a 27% reduction in the Down syndrome population for Europe in 2015.

Abortion in the U.S. has also lopped millions of potential years off Black life, according to one study. A 2016 report examined the top causes of death among Black, White and Hispanic Americans, and measured how much that cost individuals assuming their life expectancy was 75. Using data from 2009, the authors found that induced abortion siphoned 25,431,750 years of potential life from Black people compared to 22,721,475 from Whites and 15,479,100 from Hispanics.

In October, the Charlotte Lozier Institute published a paper in which Dr. Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, a Black woman, reviewed data on Black abortions.

She noted that "at every gestational age up to 21 weeks, more abortions are performed in African American women than any other ethnicity."

"They are thus more likely to be exposed to the risks and adverse outcomes of second trimester abortion. African American women are also two to three times more likely to die from abortion. The impact of abortion on maternal morbidity and mortality, fetal mortality and population health in African Americans is considerable, without any apparent benefit proportional to the disparities in risk and outcomes."

That's why advocates like Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece, have decried abortion as a deviation from the civil rights hero's vision. Responding to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in 2019, King told Fox News: "I need for her to understand that abortion is a civil wrong. And of course, if you're pro-life, you can't be racist because you're defending life for the most defenseless population on the planet -- the little babies in the womb."

King himself supported limiting family sizes while his wife accepted an award from Planned Parenthood on his behalf in 1966. Despite Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's controversial statements about Black Americans, Corretta Scott King praised Sanger, saying that "[b]ecause of her dedication, her deep convictions, and for her suffering for what she believed in, I would like to say that I am proud to be a woman tonight."

Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading abortion provider, says its services provide an answer to systemic racism. Pregnant women, it says, face disproportionately higher barriers to reproductive services compared to those of other races and ethnicities.

This appears to have led the organization to set up facilities in Black communities across the U.S.

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A Life Issues Institute report indicated in 2017 that a spate of new PPFA "mega-centers" targeted women of color. "Our research revealed that an alarming 88 percent (22 of 25) target women of color. Disturbingly, 80 percent target Black communities, 56 percent target Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods and 80 percent target one or more colleges. In total, 96 percent (24 of 25) of the mega-centers target women of color, college women, or both," it claimed.

Guttmacher has pushed back on the claim that abortion clinics targeted minority neighborhoods by publishing data showing that most abortion providers (six in 10) have been located in majority-White neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the proportion of majority-Black neighborhoods was much smaller (6%).

The conversation around what constitutes systemic racism has been ongoing and complicated. Do disproportionate economic pressures constitute systemic bias? If so, would that bias extend to abortions resulting from social and economic pressures? Data has shown that financial reasons are among the top motivating factors for women obtaining abortions.

Terrisa Bukovinac, who founded Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, told Fox News Digital that abortion redistributes oppression in several ways.

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"Capitalism and White supremacy have exploited people of color at disproportionate rates who have often experienced generational trauma and extreme poverty since colonization," she said Monday. 

"Big Abortion is exploiting families and redistributing this oppressive reality lethally onto another vulnerable group, the unborn. The industry is lining their pockets and gaining immense political power on the backs of those utterly incapable of defending themselves. Abortion is violent, state-sanctioned oppression against Black babies, and we will not stand for it. We demand economic and racial justice for all, and that includes the unborn and their parents. None of us are free until all of us are free."

In a lengthy statement, Planned Parenthood rejected the idea that Black women were participating in a genocide against their own race. CareNet President Roland Warren had suggested as much when he compared a New York clinic to Auschwitz.

"Black women are free to make our own decisions about our bodies and pregnancies, and want and deserve to have access to the best medical care available," said Nia Martin-Robinson, Planned Parenthood's director of Black leadership and engagement. 

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"Any insinuation that abortion is Black genocide is offensive and infantliziling. The real threat to Black communities’ safety, health, and lives stems from lack of access to quality, affordable health care, police violence and the criminalization of reproductive health care by anti-abortion opposition. At Planned Parenthood, we trust and we stand with Black women who have, and continue to lead the charge when it comes to the health, rights, and bodily autonomy of those in their communities."