endangered species?

I woke up this morning to hear a new attack on women’s reproductive freedom…billboards have gone up around Georgia stating that black babies are an endangered species.

Yikes! What a disgusting ad…the antis are really desperate, aren’t they?

On MSNBC this morning, the pro-billboard woman was stating that black women are targeted for abortion and that abortion is affecting their fertility rate. Ugh-idiots! Seriously, this is the most ridiculous thing I have heard a in a long time. First of all, women make a choice to come in to the clinic to seek abortion services. We are not out on the streets soliciting women for abortions. Second, let us not forget that women who have abortions are usually mothers already-having already contributed to that fertility rate.

Unfortunately, for the Right to Life Georgia group, there is no data to support their outrageous claims. The CDC reports that Black women have higher than the national fertility rate (births per 1000 women in reproductive age) and it has gone up over the years.

The amazing executive director of Sister Song was quoted in the NY times saying “The reason we have so many Planned Parenthoods in the black community is because leaders in the black community in the ’20s and ’30s went to Margaret Sanger and asked for them,” Ms. Ross said. “Controlling our fertility was part of our uplift out of poverty strategy, and it still works.”

Hey anti-choicers, way to shame black women for the choices they make. By putting a message out there that black babies are “endangered species” you are sending a message to black woman that by having an abortion they are, in essence, committing a grave crime against their "species." You are sick. We are women, not baby-making factories.

Perhaps we can flip this message. Like Sister Song said, controlling one’s fertility-either through contraception access or abortion-is a way to lift women out of poverty. By putting this message out there, targeting black women, you want to keep the cycle of poverty going by decreasing their access and shaming black women, their families, and their communities.

Wow, antis, you must be so proud.


Picture from NY Times