The New York Times
Anti-Abortion Ads Split Atlanta
05 February 2010
By Shaila Dewan ATLANTA — Anti-abortion groups have erected scores of billboards here with an alarming message: “Black children are an endangered species.”
The groups responsible insist that they are not exaggerating, despite contrary federal data. The billboards, which show a close-up of a worried-looking African-American boy, are an effort to highlight data showing that black women get a disproportionate number of abortions, especially in Georgia, and that the number in Georgia is increasing.
“The impact of abortion has become so great that it has begun to impact our fertility rate,” said Catherine Davis, the minority outreach coordinator for Georgia Right to Life, the state’s main anti-abortion group, which has sponsored the billboards in partnership with the Radiance Foundation, a group based in Atlanta that encourages adoption.
The billboards — there are 65 now and will eventually be 80, Ms. Davis said — were created in conjunction with a new Web site, www.toomanyaborted.com, which says that all of Georgia’s abortion clinics are in “urban areas where blacks reside.” The Web site connects abortion to segregation, saying that after the civil rights era, racists went “underground,” and that today “abortion is the tool they use to stealthily target blacks for extermination.”
It also says that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to reduce the population of blacks, an assertion that Planned Parenthood has disputed.
Ms. Davis said Georgia Right to Life would also support state legislation that would make it a crime for abortion providers to solicit business based on the race or sex of the fetus.
In 2006, 57.4 percent of the abortions in Georgia were performed on black women, even though blacks make up about 30 percent of the population, according to the most recent figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control. Of the 37 states that reported abortion data by race, Georgia was second only to New York and Texas in the number of abortions performed on black women. Only Mississippi and Maryland reported a higher percentage of abortions going to black women than Georgia.
But there was little evidence that abortions had made black children unusually endangered. The fertility rate, or births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, among black women remains higher than the national average and has inched up in recent years, according to C.D.C. data.
The advertising campaign has drawn fire from supporters of abortion rights. Loretta Ross, the executive director of the
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective in Atlanta, said the billboards painted black women as either monsters intent on destroying their own race or victims of whites who control abortion clinics.
“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.”
Ryan Bomberger, who left his job in advertising to found the Radiance Foundation and who designed the billboard, argued that it was not intended to induce shame.
“This is not a campaign that targets black women,” Mr. Bomberger said. “It’s a campaign that exposes an industry that we believe targets African-Americans.”
[Source:
New York Times]
WABE - Public Broadcasting Atlanta
Atlanta Group Opposes Abortion Bill 11 February 2010
[
Listen here]
Rose Scott ATLANTA, GA (WABE) - HouseBill 1155 is controversial and that's something even the newly elected house speaker David Ralston realizes. He says the bill definitely needs to be reviewed,"it sounds like a very deep subject and I would like to read the bill before I comment on that"
The bill was introduced as the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act and the main framework of the bill would make it a crime to coerce or solicit an abortion based on race. Penalties would include jail time and fines depending on the severity of the offense.
Supporters of the bill, such as Georgia Right to Life, claim the state's abortion rate points to a deliberate attempt to target black women. However, Heidi Williamson calls that deceptive and makes this counter claim, "they (Georgia Right To Life) make the assertion that Georgia has the highest rate but part of it is..Mississippi."
Williamson is the National Policy Coordinator for
SisterSong. The Atlanta based group defines itself as Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective. She says another mistruth being circulated is that Georgia's 15 abortion centers are all in black neighborhoods so the group did its own research,"we pulled the demographics of each zip code and only four fall into neighborhoods that actually have a 50 percent population of black people or more."
Williamson says that finding was part of a fact sheet Sister Song presented to members of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. They say that was to counter information previously presented by supporters of the bill.
[Source:
WABE]
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