When will Black women's health matter? That's a question I've asked myself more than once during the recent Congressional effort to repeal health care reform that would deny countless women of color access to affordable and quality reproductive health care services.
I asked myself that question again when I heard the story of a desperate Black woman in Sacramento who had saved to pay for her abortion but did not have enough money to pay for a babysitter for her two children (and barely enough gas money to drive the 60 miles to her appointment). She arrived at the clinic with her children in tow.
But it wasn't until a group called The Radiance Foundation started putting up billboards saying abortion is Black genocide that the subject of Black women's role in this debate made headline news. More controversy was stirred up recently when a group distributed flyers on Princeton University's campus declaring, "In the new Klan, lynching is for amateurs," and pointing to a website called klanparentood.com. I suppose I should be grateful for all this attention. However, given the willful deception and bizarre claims being spread by these campaigns (and lampooned on The Daily Show), I can't say that I am.
The billboards had been appearing in Black communities coast to coast for more than a year, and the campaign was reported on months ago by the Times and other major news outlets. But when a huge ad went on display in lower Manhattan in late February, a real furor erupted, resulting in headlines across the U.S and even overseas.
The billboard, depicting a sweet, worried-looking young Black girl, declared: "The Most Dangerous Place for an African American Is in the Womb." An accompanying Web site, toomanyaborted.com, informed visitors that abortion is part of a racist scheme "to stealthily target blacks for extermination." Late last month, the same group unveiled billboards in Chicago with President Obama's image and the tag line, "Every 21 minutes, our next possible leader is aborted."
The new "Klan" website advertised on Princeton's campus, obviously targeted to young people, is no doubt eager to stir similar outrage with its cartoon character of a doctor in a Klan hood wielding a knife, and its faux-hipster declaration, "We are the hood in parenthood."
Creating a perfect storm of race, class, and gender-baiting in the midst of the abortion and health care debate, these ads imply that Black women are either ignorant dupes of racist, profiteering abortion providers, or uncaring enemies of their people, willing to make Black children an "endangered species" to further their own selfish goals. By that same logic, the groups behind the billboards and web campaigns ought to take out ads against education, since studies demonstrate that well-educated Black women have fewer children.
So who are these groups that purport to care so much about the survival of the Black "species?" According to news reports, funding for the Radiance Foundation ads comes from Georgia Right to Life and the Georgia Republican Party, two largely white, male, conservative groups not previously known for their commitment to women or people of color. These are the same Republicans, after all, who recently passed a bill that would take away women's access to critical services including prenatal health care, nutritional programs for infants, and child care assistance. Given all these cutbacks in services for one of the most under-served groups in America, a more accurate billboard would have said that the most dangerous place for an African American child is outside the womb.
But accuracy is not the point of these ads. Take for instance the claim that abortion is making black children an endangered species. While it is true that abortion rates for black women are higher in some states (including Georgia, where this campaign was hatched), it is also true that 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 data from the Centers for Disease Control. To the extent that Black women are having abortions in greater numbers, the Guttmacher Institute has determined that this is due to their greater incidence of unintended pregnancies, resulting from economic inequality and poor access to contraception and education.
All of which leads me back to my question: When will Black women's health matter? In a country where Black women are likely to have less access to health care, have higher incidence of chronic illness and injury, and in which at least 17 percent are uninsured, it is little wonder that some are driven to abortion out of desperation. They are trying to keep body and soul together and save the children they already have. For women like that single mother of two in Sacramento, this is not a "choice" issue so much as a life circumstance -- or a decision borne of desperate circumstances.
Perhaps Black women's health care will begin to matter when politicians realize that protecting their health, improving their life circumstances and safeguarding personal decision making - not blaming them for genocide -- is the route to making abortion less necessary. Billboards, lurid websites and punitive legislation will never accomplish this urgent goal, if indeed they were ever really meant to.
Veronica Byrd: Why African Americans Support Abortion Rights
Keli Goff: The Truth About Blacks and Abortion
Irene Monroe: Black Community's Division on Abortion Ad Campaign
Heroic Media, Radiance Foundation Continue to Put Up Billboards ...
Antiabortion activists see a racial conspiracy - Los Angeles Times
There is a new hypothesis that suggests that each infant sets up a 3 part digestion pattern that may play a key part in every aspect of his life (including both overweight and underweight problems).
He develops, over the first years of his life a pattern of a) breaking down food into usable nutrients - from mouth to stomach, b) absorbing those nutrients - in small intestine, and c) excreting out waste - from large intestine.
Therefore each child sets a 3 part pattern in infancy of how he will digest food. This seems to subconsciously program almost all behavior from then on.
This pattern is in the ENS, or the Enteric Nervous System or digestion brain. It is unconscious motivation, and it is very difficult to change.
These three patterns may be mostly set up through breast feeding and weaning.
Generally problems with breast feeding will lead to overweight problems, and problems with weaning will lead to underweight problems.
Resetting this 3 part infant digestion pattern in the ENS, solves many human physical and psychological problems that seems to be quite extensive.
Many black dialysis patients are unable to get a kidney transplant due to lack of close genetic donors.
It is time for the middle class to stand up for itself. I have no problem with public health care, HOWEVER, their needs to be ways to EXCLUDE those who place themselves in a position of poverty and sickness due to their own reckless actions or the reckless actions of their parents.
Per the CDC, 72 percent of Black teen boys and 58% of Black teen girls between the ages of 14-19 report that they engage in sexual intercourse. The comparable percentages for white teenagers are 40% (males) and 45% (girls).
Instead of being horrified by these numbers, author Eleanor Hoytt blames -- guess who -- white Republican males. Those racist Republicans don't care enough about Black deprivation and oppression to understand why Black girls need more money from the public treasury to keep from having babies. It's about "affordability" and "access."
Judging by the numbers, though, Blacks don't seem to have a problem getting access to abortion; their reported abortion rate is over three times higher than whites. Is that because they can't afford contraceptives? Seems odd, considering that abortions cost a lot more than condoms do.
There is something else going on here, and it seems that Black leaders don't like to talk about it. It's so much easier to blame white Republicans.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_21.pdf
Black women's life expectancy exceeds both that of black males and white males.
Results—In 2006, the overall expectation of life at birth was 77.7 years, representing an increase of 0.3 years from life expectancy in 2005. From 2005 to 2006, life expectancy at birth increased for all groups considered. It increased for males (from 74.9 to 75.1) and females (from 79.9 to 80.2), the white (from 77.9 to 78.2) and black populations (from 72.8 to 73.2), black males (from 69.3 to 69.7) and females (from 76.1 to 76.5), and white males (from 75.4 to 75.7) and females (from 80.4 to 80.6).
Maybe we ought to forget the race-baiting altogether, and make male life expectancy a priority.
Why are you not commenting on Asian women's health for example ?
Or is it George Orwell's " All animals are created equal- but some are more equal than others "?
The hostility you see isn't in the blogger's post. You brought it with you. Why do you assume that only one group can "matter" at a time? Why is a request for inclusion threatening to you?
It would seem in the interest of 'fairness,' we ought to be either worried about bringing male life expectancy UP to that of black females, or bring white females DOWN to that of everyone else. (the last was sarcasm, for the intellectually challenged.)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_21.pdf
http://www.womensenews.org/story/reproductive-health/110421/black-womens-maternal-risks-go-unquestioned
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0080.pdf
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0084.pdf
pack of condoms?
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If you are privy to additional information please link it. If you aren't please attend to the American Ideal of "innocent until proven guilty" and assume that steps were taken but proved ineffective.
Michigan GOP: Foster Kids Only Get Used Clothes
posted by: Jessica Pieklo
http://www.care2.com/causes/politics/blog/michigan-gop-foster-kids-only-get-used-clothes/
So...now..."desperation" is justification for the killing of innocent human life simply because it is in the way??
Wow!!!
Exactly what specific, exclusive religious belief do you think is being legislated in this instance?? Please clarify.
YOU are a human life. And you are not entitled to so much as an unwilling drop of blood from any other person. Imminent death would not change this. It isn't, "sLegal can't take some of someone's bone marrow unless (s)he really really needs it". It is "sLegal can't take any part of someone's body for any reason unless they willingly gives it".
If your right to life does not entitle you to unwilling flesh *now*, then it couldn't possibly entitle you to it *then*. We don't have to figure out precisely where on the scale from "0" to "adult" fetal rights are because "adult" isn't enough to entitle you to forced gestation.
This is why I refer to those people as "Pre-Life" or "Fetal Supremacists" as this most accurately describes their demands. They would give fetal-you rights that they do not grant adult-you. They go on and on about how a fetus's Right To Life entitles it to feed on an unwilling person's body but won't grant that same right to a born person.
When Adult-you has the right to violate another person's Bodily Autonomy then the question of when you gained this right becomes germane. Until then its a waste of breath.