Abortion, Poverty, and Democratic Support for Black Genocide

Earlier this year I mounted a defense of the Republican Party / Bush Administration's pro-life record (Countering the "GOP / Bush 'duped' Pro-Lifers" Smear January 30, 2008) -- to which Ryan Anderson of First Things took notice (He’s Just Been All Talk on Sanctity of Life, Right? First Things June 18, 2008 - thanks, Ryan).

And to which "Radical Catholic Mom" of Vox Nova has apparently taken offense:

From reading both Ryan’s and Christoper’s points and the arguments being made by my fellow contributors– Henry, Morning’s Minion, Michael Iafrate, Nate Wildermuth, and Gerald Campbell–it is evident that pro-life success is defined quite differently depending on perspective.

Both Ryan and Christoper argue that pro-life success is equivalent to legislation. And if one accepts their definition of success, they are absolutely correct. Wow, President Bush has been the most successful president in US history regarding pro-life leadership and laws! The problem for both Anderson and Blosser is that none of our contributors look to legislation alone to draw their conclusions. They look to the numbers. And when the numbers are read, problems begin to emerge for many pro-lifers.

First, I never contended that pro-life success "is equivalent to legislation." I happen think pro-life successes are chiefly won outside the halls of Congress. The "changing of hearts and minds" is accomplished less by legislation than by those who staff the Crisis Pregnancy Centers, adoption agencies and ministries such as Rachel's Vineyard and SilentNoMore that span our country.

But that is not to say that pro-life legislative achievements do not matter, or who (falsely, I believe) claim that "Republicans need to keep abortion legal, but make it look like they are trying to end it"; "none of these politicians will accomplish anything"; "None of the cadidates are either willing or capable of stopping the slaughter of our unborn."

In fact, Radical Catholic Mom neglects to mention the concluding paragraph from my post, which rebuts her (mis)characterization:

[Republican-supported pro-life legislation] is something to be thankful for, though there is much work yet to be done. And I concur with the critics of Vox Nova: legislation alone will not change hearts and minds. What is truly needed is spiritual transformation on the part of the American populace and a re-orientation towards life. But the passing of such legislation and the efforts of the Bush administration and Republicans have at the very least served the cause of justice, in protecting the right to life of the "least among us." In the words of Br. Matthew Augustine, OP in a comment at Vox Nova: "The law isn’t merely there to coerce behavior but also to protect the common good and reflect the truth of the human person and the moral order. It is worth our blood, sweat and tears to work to ensure that the dignity of unborn life is reflected in law."

Radical Catholic Mom continues:

The only organization that has thoroughly researched abortion is Planned Parenthood’s Alan Guttmacher Institute. And when we look at the research of the AGI we will notice a few significant points. First, abortion rates have steadily been declining since 1981. All of us should agree that any decline in abortion is a success. According to Anderson’s and Blosser’s logic one MAY conclude that anti-abortion LAWS affect abortion RATES, but if that is the case, then why was there a peak in abortions in 1989 under pro-life President Bush I and steep declines in abortion under pro-abortion President Clinton?

I started to ask these questions. I served on the Board of my State’s Right to Life office and I had to ask some hard questions. For instance, why was the abortion rate highest for Alaska Native women when they make up a small percentage of people in my State? Then, my questions went national. Why are African-American and Hispanic women more likely to abort than White women? When a person reads the same report she notices that a majority of women who abort are already mothers and over 50% of them are economically poor. I had to conclude that if pro-lifers REALLY are interested in decreasing abortion rates, then maybe changing our society and culture to support life AFTER birth would be the best option. ...

POVERTY is INHERENTLY linked to abortion. If we pro-lifers REALLY CARE about abortion rates, we need to focus on poverty in our country and more pro-family legislation such as, paid sick leave, paid paternity/maternity leave (this promotes breastfeeding which helps overall health care and decreases illness tremendously), increased daycare subsidies, paid healthcare, to name a few.

Poverty and Abortion: Dueling Bloggers

I'll be the first to point out that I'm generally not good with statistics, so I'll gladly defer to those more knowledgeable than myself.Challenging the "need to vote Republican on pro-life grounds," Morning's Minion takes up the question of abortion, poverty and the Clinton years in Abortion and Economics (Vox Nova May 22, 2007).

DarwinCatholic responded with Poverty and Abortin: A New Analysis:

So far as I can tell, the argument has the following components:

1) Economic well-being (as measured by a low poverty rate and a high median income) has been greater under Democratic administrations than Republican ones in the last 30 years.

2) Abortion rates have either been lower or have decreased faster under Clinton than under Reagan, HW Bush or W Bush.

3) There is a strong correlation between economic well-being and the abortion rate.

I'm going to argue that all of these are partly or wholly false.

Morning Minion believes there is "a correlation between abortion and poverty"; DarwinCatholic responds that "the only reason that abortion rates decreased faster under Clinton (average rate decrease per year) is because the conception rate shrank faster under Clinton" and concludes that "the fact that the abortion rate has fallen consistently even in periods when poverty was increasing suggests that poverty is not the primary abortion driver in US society, even if it is a motivation cited by those who do abort." Very much worth the read.

Also of interest: Vox Nova's BlackAdder directs us to the following study from the Heritage Institute: Analyzing the Effect of State Legislation on the Incidence of Abortion Among Minors by Michael J. New, Ph.D., which finds:

Although the decline in the overall incidence of abortion during the 1990s has been widely reported, scant attention has been paid to the more dramatic reduction in abortion rates among minors. Between 1985 and 1999, the minor abortion rate fell by almost 50 percent, compared to a 29 percent decline in the overall abortion rate. While a number of factors may have contributed to this decline, the impact of pro-life legislation on the incidence of abortion among minors cannot be overlooked.

The Supreme Court's Casey decision and the electoral success of pro-life candidates at the state level resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of laws enacted to protect the unborn during the 1990s. By the end of the decade, more states had adopted pro-life legislation, including parental involvement requirements. Regression results from this analysis suggest that parental involvement laws and public funding restrictions are effective in reducing the incidence of abortion among minors. Specifically, the passage of a parental involvement law correlates with a 16 percent decline in the minor abortion rate, and the passage of Medicaid funding restrictions correlates with a 23 percent decline in the minor abortion rate.

What about poverty?

As RCM notes (from the Guttmacher study Trends in Abortion in the United States, 1973-2005): "Abortion rates are highest among black and Hispanic women"; "Poor and low-income women account for more than half of U.S. abortions" and "More than 80% of women having abortions are unmarried" and "a majority of women having abortions have been mothers." I agree with her that as over 90% of all abortions appear to occur in the first trimester, "our work is still cut out."

However, I'm not exactly clear that this amounts to a need to vote Democrat, much less for the most zealously "pro-choice" presidential candidate in the Democratic Party.

Does it necessarily follow that raising the level of material income of unwed (largely Black and Hispanic) mothers will result in a decrease in abortions? Or that said abortions are procured because they are unable to afford a child? Or could it be rather that they view a child as an inconvenience and impediment to their way of life?

Whether poverty truly impedes or even prohibits the raising of a child seems to me most debatable (speaking from experience, my parents raised four brothers on a single professor's meager salary; my mother came from a family of six kids; I recall a family -- Catholic, of course -- in my Boy Scout troop of twelve siblings). Suffice to say it can be done.

The United Nations defined poverty as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information"; a definition which would certainly apply to those living in a number of third world countries.

But what about the United States? -- A cursory look at the material possessions of the majority of our nation's "poor" as chronicled in the Heritage Foundation's How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty in America (based on the most recent U.S. Census data) gives one pause, but we'll save that discussion for another day.

Earlier in February, Ramesh Ponneru dealt with the similar claim from National Catholic Reporter's Joe "bishops be damned" Feuerherd (Catholics & Voting & Abortion NRO February 25, 2008):

Feuerherd asks, “[I]s it fair for a Catholic like me to suspect that the liberal economic policies of the Democratic candidate, whether Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, will result in less dire poverty and thus perhaps fewer abortions? And isn't that supposed to be the goal?” Anyone who wants to cast a ballot on this assumption has a moral obligation to investigate whether it is, in fact, true that 1) Democratic policies would reduce poverty much more than Republican ones would and 2) that abortion and poverty rates correlate in as straightforward a manner as Feuerherd idly (and conveniently) supposes. I am not aware of research that corroborates point two, let alone both of them taken together.

And there is another problem with this argument, which is that a reduction in the number of abortions is not the only goal that pro-lifers should have. Also important is that the law stop treating unborn children as subhuman creatures who may legitimately be denied the protections of the law against unjust killing. Obama himself may be perfectly sincere in willing that fewer women exercise the (supposed) right to abortion even while he supports keeping that option legal and making it subsidized. I have no reason to doubt that he is. But he also wills that unborn children be denied the basic legal protection from homicide that you and I enjoy.

To reiterate: I agree with Radical Catholic Mom that pro-life legislation (whatever its merits) isn't enough, and we've "got our work cut out for us" addressing the majority who abort in the first term. I'm also open to exploring the advancement of "paid sick leave, paid paternity/maternity leave (this promotes breastfeeding which helps overall health care and decreases illness tremendously), increased daycare subsidies, paid healthcare" (it never occurred to me that these are exclusively Democratic concerns).

But if she's inclined to vote for the Democrats whether on a presidential, state or local level (it's difficult not to view such a post as an apologetic for such), I think the case is still hers to prove.

"War on the Poor"

As long as we're discussing the relation between poverty and abortion, it strikes me that the question can be turned around. If as the Guttmacher Institute demonstrates, it is indeed the case that the majority of those who have abortions happen to be financially-impoverished minorities, what does it say about the peddling of unrestricted access to abortion to minorities? -- Let's consider the case of the Black American population in the United States:

• When black women constitute only 6% of the population, but comprise 36% of the abortion industry’s clientele
  
• When the leading abortion providers have chosen to exploit blacks by locating 94% of their abortuaries in urban neighborhoods with high black populations
  
• When you consider that 1,452 African-American children are killed each day by the heinous act of abortion
  
• When you consider that 3 out of 5 pregnant African-American women will abort their child ...
  

... you honestly find yourself questioning:

Who is profiting from keeping abortion legal?

Who is really waging war on the poor?

and what is a black presidential candidate doing pledging his fealty to Planned Parenthood?

Related:

• As William McGurn noted (NARAL Catholics Line Up for Obama Wall Street Journal June 24, 2008):

  The first is to claim that Republicans have done nothing during their time in power to diminish abortion. Plainly this is not the view that Planned Parenthood promotes.

  In fact, let me direct you to Planned Parenthood's "George W. Bush's War on Women: A Pernicious Web: A Planned Parenthood Report on the Administration and Congress" providing "A Chronology of Attacks on Reproductive Rights" under the Bush administration and a GOP-led Congress (87 pages).
  

• Margaret Sanger would have loved Barack Obama, by Rev. Clenard H.
  Childress. RenewAmerica March 15, 2008. Rev. Dr. Clenard H. Childress, Jr., is the senior pastor of The New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, NJ.