Hey everyone! Guess what Friday is? If you guessed that it is Abortion Blackout Day, you’re totally right. Yes, the war against abortion continues, but this time it’s a sartorial decree: Wear black on Friday if you’re anti-choice!
Here’s the Abortion Blackout Day “End Abortion By 2020″ video.
I have misgivings about the entire Abortion Blackout Day website (not only because the statistics they show are- surprise!- misleading) but because the video engages in the anti-choice movement’s latest tactic, race baiting.
Recently, anti-choice rhetoric has zeroed in on a statistic which shows that a slight majority of abortions in 2006 were performed on black women. Georgia Right to Life has teamed up with the Radiance Foundation to produce billboards which read “Black Children are an Endangered Species.” Despite the billboards claims, the message is blatantly untrue, with the Centers for Disease Control reporting that the fertility rate among African-American women remains the highest in the country.
The president of the Radiance Foundation, Ryan Bomberger, told The New York Times, “This is not a campaign that targets black women, it’s a campaign that exposes an industry that we believe targets African-Americans.” Anti-choice advocates like Bomberger say Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, specifically encouraged African Americans to abort. A documentary, written and produced by Mark Crutcher traces connections, in the most Glenn Beckian of fashions, between slavery, eugenics, Nazis and abortions.
Providing communities with a living wage, affordable and accessible health care, public transit, and better jobs is the actual solution.
But of course the proponents of this campaign will not commit themselves to it. This would require seeing low-income women as people. And we cannot have that now could we!
PioneerGrrrl, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Plus better sex ed and a more mature attitude to sex and communication about sex, especially contraception, in society would do wonders.
The anti-choice groups do not care about black communities. If they did, they’d be working to ensure that these communities have access to adequate resources and community infrastructure.
Reccently, I was in a junior high whose demographics are predominantly minority. And actually seeing that the city food bank is a big donor to that school’s cafeteria left me shaken.
Why are the people claiming they are ‘pro-child’ not out working to effectively remedy sittuations like this so children DO get enough nutritious food to eat? Aren’t they embarassed by this?
Its Feminists who are working for the social and economic justice that will prevent
abortions by letting women have better choices.The so called Pro-Lifers on the other
hand only prevent safe abortions.
PioneerGrrrl, no they are not embarrassed by this. The anti-choice crowd could care less about peoples well being. They could care less if people are living in poverty in their own back yards. They care about themselves and controlling people. That is all the anti-choicers believe in, controlling peoples lives. They go on about how moral they are when in reality they are doing the exact opposite of what their God tells them to do. They are a bunch of hypocrites who SHOULD be embarrassed by what they are doing but they aren’t. It is disgusting.
Yes it is disgusting…offensive etc. Ideally this should be a non-partisan issue which people would want to correct.
Their wanting to prance around in black instead of ensuring families have adequate nutrition and good jobs tells me all I need to know about their actual concern for human life.
(As much as I hate pink) let’s all wear pink on Friday.
I actually want to wear black on Friday and everyday to mourn the small backward thinking of anti-choice women and men. Instead they should be caring about human trafficing, women being used as sex slaves and all the women that are murdered and slaughtered and are starving in Africa and all over the planet. This group that says they care about children should care for all the starving and sick children around the world.
Wear black with a white or colorful ribbon or flower of your choice to express hope for the future that our world will become one of ” live and let live”; a world of tolerance.
Me the Fashionista will not in in black anything on Friday….even though I got a lot of that colour for fashion.
In determining whether to continue a monthly donation to Abortion Blackout and assessing their effectiveness in bringing true “choice” to women (choosing between taking the right road or the easy road), I came across your article. Thank you! Apparently, Abortion Blackout is getting the job done if you deemed their Abortion Blackout Day and their hope and campaign that fewer black women will abort their babies worthy of writing this article. It is also encouraging as I read the comments to see that the whole argument that “pro-life people are so obviously stupid and haters because they don’t agree with the idea of mothers being able to pick and choose which children live and which children die” is just getting sillier and sillier with time. Science has disproved the arguments that these babies aren’t a life so now the reasons for taking of a life is justified by your readers as being: 1)wages aren’t high enough, no public transit system, etc., 2) minority kids don’t receive nutritious meals, 2) society (and especially pro-lifers) should have a more mature attitude about sex, 3) abortions are safe, 4) society should focus more on human trafficking, sex slaves and women being murdered. Any thinking person can only say, huh? What does that have to do with taking a life? Hopefully, Abortion Blackout will help people like this progress at least to the point that they can see the humanity and beauty in treating our unwanted children with at least as much care and respect as we would treat our unwanted animals. Let’s use resources to truly help parents become responsible, to help them unselfishly “plan” and care for their children and help them find families for the many unwanted babies instead of promoting “putting them down”.