Black Women And Their Babies Being Targeted?
New America Media - L.A. Watts Times
LOS ANGELES - "No hype. Just truth," reads the simple slogan on toomanyaborted.com. The truth, says The Radiance Foundation, is that a disproportionate number of Black women in America are having induced abortions and that it's no accident. But they contend Planned Parenthood — the nation's largest abortion provider — is targeting these women as part of a covert eugenics experiment aimed at curbing the Black population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing 2007 figures, reports that, "Black women had higher abortion rates and ratios than white women and women of other races." It also noted that, "Among women from the 37 areas that reported race for 2007, white women (including Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women) accounted for the largest percentage (55.9%) of abortions; black women accounted for 36.5% and women of other racial groups for 7.6% of abortions." The disproportionate number, as well as the higher abortion rates and ratios among Black women, are contributed to an abortion-awareness and pro-adoption-themed campaign called Endangered Species. The campaign started in Atlanta and had spread to several locations, including Los Angeles. It started in L.A. in January and is expected to end March 6. About 70 billboards featuring Black children — and stating that they are an "endangered species" — had been placed throughout the local area last month to grab the attention of those passing by and lead them to www.toomanyaborted.com to read more about the impact abortion has had among African Americans. Now, about 50 billboards are still up. Connected to the campaign was the National Day of Mourning, a cross-country ceremony memorializing the more than 50 million babies (of all races) aborted in the United States. Locally, several people gathered at Philadelphia Faith Temple in Compton to take part in the ceremony. More than 50 white roses (each representing 1 million aborted babies) adorned the podium where pro-lifers made their cases against what they essentially characterized as a brutal and ungodly act. "Abortion stops a beating heart," said Dr. La Verne Tolbert, a former Planned Parenthood board member who is now on the Issues 4 Life board, a minister, and a staunch pro-lifer. "A person who is pregnant is going to have a baby ... it is not a mass of tissue," she later added. Tolbert left the board after doing extensive research on the subject, which uncovered things that she said unnerved her. Tolbert said she read 135 books, articles and dissertations and came across something that "absolutely floored" her — a book called "Population and the American Future." "In 1970 the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (as it was called then, now it's called the Department of Health and Human Services) with President Nixon, mandated a commission on population and the American future ...," she said. "They looked at how the Black community was expanding. Remember in the 1970s and '60s, everyone had large families but especially Blacks. "We (would have) eight or nine children. And so, they determined that since Black women were so fertile, there had to be a plan to keep us from having so many babies," she said. "When I first became a board member, I thought what everyone else thought: that (the baby) was a mass of tissue. And I felt that every woman had a right to have an abortion, that it was a matter of choice. At that time in the early '70s, we knew little about abortion. "We didn't have the information we have now. But while I was on the board, I received documents that detailed how abortions were performed." Tolbert also noticed something else: She said that while she was on the board, a death certificate had to be issued for every abortion that was performed. "And I thought, 'Well, a death certificate is only required if it's a living a being. So, (when you) talk about it being a mass of tissue, how can that be when a death certificate is required?' When I read how abortions were performed, I came back to the board meeting and I protested. She said, " 'This is traumatic for the mother and the baby.' And, I was told that it was not traumatic, and then I started looking around the room and wondering why abortion was more necessary for Black women ... " BLACK WOMEN'S EXPERIENCES L.A. resident Tera Hilliard said, at age 14, she was rushed through her abortion without much explanation as to what was happening to her. "(The abortion) wasn't even my decision. My relative, who I was living with at the time, forced me to have it done," said Hilliard, who had a total of three abortions. "Nobody would talk to me. I was 24 weeks along and had to have a two-day procedure. I didn't even know what that meant." Tegra Little was a 20-year-old sociology major at UCLA and guessed she was seven or eight weeks pregnant when she decided to have an abortion. She didn't want anyone or anything to get in the way of her schooling and career plans, she said. "I felt completely numb" the day of the procedure, Little recalled. "I remember in Planned Parenthood asking them if I could see the ultrasound and they said no ... I went into the little locker room area to put on my robe. Then I went into the room, got up on the table and they gave me something ... I guess to numb me below. "I remember hearing the suctioning, sort of vacuum sound, and there was a nurse in there and a doctor performing the procedure. I don't remember being on the table that long. I remember getting off the table and the doctor saying, "everything's fine, everything's done...' " Both African-American women said they still sometimes feel regret and guilt over their decisions. Upon resigning from the board and moving to California to research Planned Parenthood in depth, Tolbert said she discovered that the federally funded series of clinics are strategically placed in poor (mostly Black and Latino) communities to circumvent the proliferation of undesirable offspring. A lot of the clinics are school-based, she said, because population control advocates feel that "Black children have no self-control." Instead of encouraging the teaching of values and life skills such as carefully choosing friends, self-discipline, delayed gratification and planning for the future, "they are handing them condoms," she said. "They teach about ... stuff that parents would be appalled if they knew their children were learning (about them) ... and the condoms that they're giving our kids in these schools are cheap, they are inexpensive, they are designed to fail," Tolbert added. "When they fail, the girls go to the school-based clinics, they take them off grounds during morning school hours. "Her parents have no idea that she's had an abortion when she comes home. That's what's going on in our community and people don't know it. When I read this research, I was furious. "I was shocked, I was appalled, I was alarmed, and I have been doing everything I could to get this information to our people." Officials from Planned Parenthood Los Angeles denied the accusations against their organization and insist that it provides important and necessary services to uninsured and underinsured communities no matter what race. "I can't imagine taking young people off their campuses. It's untrue," said Adrianne Black, co-CEO of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, who called the concept of the Endangered Species campaign "offensive and disturbing." "The campuses that we support for LAUSD request that we provide education, STD testing. They usually ask us and organizations like us to come to their schools, because they know there is a high incidence of STDs in specific communities. "As someone who grew up in South L.A., it's just hard for me to understand why someone would want to say those kinds of things that really don't hold up to what it is we do every single day," she said. It is health disparities, not race, Black explained, that drives poor people to Planned Parenthood clinics. They come in, she said, for important health screenings such as screenings for breast and cervical cancer, HIV/AIDS and other STDs. Many of their education programs focus on preventing teen pregnancy and on providing support to parenting teens, she added. "Think about what is going on in this country as our own president is fighting for health so that people have access to insurance and care," Black said. "We can see it all over the place, being fought against by people who don't care about poor people, women of color, women who face barriers every single day to health care. (Planned Parenthood) stands in those communities, and we take anybody, any color, who comes to our clinic seeking preventative STD treatment. We provide over 33,000 pap smears to women in our community regardless of color and almost the same number of breast exams ..." Both Tolbert and Black agree that abstinence education plays a vital role in sex education. "The main way to deter abortions is to speak about abstinence," Tolbert said. "Abstinence education teaches young people skills they will need to be successful (in) their entire lives (like) self-control. Even when a person is married, they have to exercise self-control. Planning for the future, delayed gratification, choosing the right friends, avoiding drugs, alcohol and risky behaviors — this is what abstinence education teaches." Black said: "At Planned Parenthood we're giving teens and their families medically accurate sex education and that includes information about healthy relationships, about not being forced into making decisions through peer pressure." "We talk about abstinence every single day," she said.
