Abortion and the Black Community [Jay]

Last night I had the opportunity to teach a break out session in our CPC’s Prenatal Parenting Class. It was a tough audience of roughly 10 men that came to the class with the mothers of their children. Our Director decided we should try to do a “Dad Session” with them. It may strike some of you as hard to believe that my public speaking is often characterized as passionate and a bit confrontational. (I will wait a moment while you all recover from the shock of hearing that) I tried to stay on focus and leave the men with a few basic ideas. They will have a tremendous impact, positive or negative, on their children whether they want to or not. Loving our children and participating in their lives is the best way to equip them to deal with the challenges of life. God loves them and their children. (Of course of all of the info I gave them the God part made them the most uncomfortable)

What the heck does any of this have to do with bio-ethics and life issues you ask? Well after I finished, one of the men came over to talk to me. He was a black man, about 40ish, in normal casual wear and very articulate. He told me he was a counselor and worked in a ministry trying to help the black community in our area break some of the destructive life patterns that persistently passed from generation to generation. As he ran through statistics he started to talk about the number of abortions in the black community of the United States and asked me why the black church leaders will not speak out. I told him that they were not the only Christian leaders afraid to say something on Sunday or in public about the issue of abortion, but he would have none of that. The thing that struck me the most was a moment while we were discussing figures. I knew of or was familiar with every statistic that he shared, but there was something about the look in his eyes as he relayed them. “Black women are three times more likely to get an abortion and represent 1/3 of all surgical abortions in the United States though we are around 13% of the population. I have read that 47% of black pregnancies end in abortion, so that is half of our children we have killed right there.” The last sentence absolutely stopped the conversation. He looked at the floor for a moment overwhelmed with emotion. His eyes were all at once pained and enraged.

I often appeal for passion and outrage on the issue of abortion, and this conversation reminds me why it is so important. I will supply links on this post to sites that give statistics for you to sort through if you wish, and if any of the other guys have other resources I invite them to put them down as well. This should give you the chance to evaluate the numbers yourself as much as possible. Any way you evaluate them, the statistics as it pertains to the black community are heartbreaking. The numbers were just numbers before last night, though. A man who loves the black community and is fighting to save and transform this culture changed that. I am haunted by that moment and the look in this man's eyes. “So that is half our children we have killed right there.” His people are being killed from within, and he can not understand why the leaders of his community refuse to say something. I had no answer that satisfied him.

Links: Abort.73 on minority statistics, Black Genocide.org, an article in 2003 from NRO’s Anne Hendershott asking the same question of black leaders, Georgia Right to Life on the numbers locally here in GA for 2005.