Recently I was asked to participate in a debate on abortion at an African American conference. The invitation came from the conference director, who had heard me speaking on a local black radio station about the prevalence of abortion in the black community. My opponent was to be a black social worker whom I did not know."Why has no one ever told us these things?"
Very few conference participants chose to come into the workshop. Our audience consisted of three of my pro-life friends and six of my opponent's friends. Everyone else apparently chose to go to the workshop next door on racial profiling.
I started out by presenting some statistics on abortion and the African American community. Facts such as: Abortion is the leading cause of death in the African American community, accounting for more deaths in the last 25 years than all other causes combined . . . . Hispanics have now surpassed African Americans as the nation's largest minority group . . . . Married African American women have a five times greater abortion rate than married Caucasian women. This was just to be my introduction.
My opponent stood up, looked at me, and said, "Why has no one ever told us these things?"
The debate was over. We spent the rest of the hour having a rather serious discussion with the audience as to how these statistics came to be.
Well, the answer to that question has something to do with the so-called leaders of the African-American community. For example, Rev. Jesse Jackson used to be pro-life...until he got co-opted by the Democratic Party. The issue just isn't addressed in the African-American community near as I can tell.
By the way, I'm no expert on this topic and I'm not going to pretend that I have all the answers... I will highly recommend the piece though.
