Atlanta Billboards Proclaim 'Black Children Are An Endangered Species'
Categories: Pregnancy & Birth, In The News
Credit: Kendrick Brinson, The New York Times / Redux
The 65 billboards, one of which is pictured above, are simple -- just that phrase, a large photo of a child's face, and the Web site, TooManyAborted.com.
That site includes statements such as "The majority of Georgia's abortion clinics are located in urban areas where blacks reside," and promotes a controversial set of beliefs about birth control activist Margaret Sanger and the origins of Planned Parenthood. The site also links to a film about this issue called 'Maafa 21 - Black Genocide in 21st Century America'.
Here's the trailer:
In a New York Times story about the billboards, Catherine Davis of Georgia Right to Life -- one of the sponsors of the billboard campaign (the other is The Radiance Foundation) -- explained the ads by saying that, "The impact of abortion has become so great that it has begun to impact [the] fertility rate" in the black community.
The idea that abortion clinics are specifically "targeting" pregnant black women is not new. A 2001 paper from the New York University History Department titled "Birth Control or Race Control? Sanger and the Negro Project," describes efforts by the Birth Control Federation of America (which later became Planned Parenthood) to provide contraceptives to the black community as "constructed in terms and with perceptions that today smack of racism."
Loretta Ross, the executive director of Atlanta's SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective offers another theory. "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," Ross told the Times. "Controlling our fertility was part of our uplift out of poverty strategy, and it still works."
Although data from the Centers for Disease Control, as reported by the Times, shows that more than 50 percent of the Georgia abortion procedures were indeed performed on black women, "there was little evidence that abortions had made black children unusually endangered." The same CDC data shows that "the fertility rate...among black women remains higher than the national average" according to the newspaper.
By injecting race into the conversation about abortion, the campaign is garnering attention for the groups that are sponsoring it as well. The National Abortion Rights Action League gives Georgia a 'D' for the state's lack of access to abortions, stating that "92 percent of Georgia counties have no abortion provider."
On its Web site, Georgia Right To Life says that they are "proud" of that grade, adding that they are "working toward getting an 'F'!"
Related: Birth Control
