Civil rights activist Dorothy Height died last week, and among her many notable causes was her fierce drive for women's reproductive and civil rights.
She led the National Council of Negro Women to become one of the few organizations pushing for black women's abortion rights because back-alley procedures disproportionately caused injury and death. Height advocated for birth control, arguing it as a civil rights issue in the 1960s.
Today, black women's reproductive rights are still a matter of civil rights. Last February's controversial billboard from the Georgia Right to Life proves this once again. It displayed black children as an endangered species and suggested that abortion is a modern day form of genocide. Of course, it also spawned a mass of responses from both sides of the argument.
While Dorothy Height fought for women's reproductive rights, the Black Panther Party advocated against birth control and abortions, also arguing that abortions are genocidal.
Regardless of where you stand, it is hard to forget black women undergo about 40 percent of total abortions in America. It is almost impossible to ignore the fact that 40 percent of pregnancies for black women end in abortion. These numbers are staggering, considering black people make up only 13 percent of the population.
At what rate does a population grow when 40 percent of its offspring are never born? This does not speak toward infant mortality either because unborn, aborted children are not counted in this.
Given numbers such as these, it is not hard to see how the genocide hypothesis could be reached. More so, 94 percent of abortion clinics are located in urban areas, ones that mostly have a high concentration of black and Latino people.
Abortions are not only targeted to but also made conveniently available for black women at a rate that undermines procreation rates. This means that black children are aborted at a rate three times that of all other races.
Does the creation of a multi-racial or post-racial society mean staggering the growth of a whole faction of the population? This social Darwinist approach is in our best interest, and we cannot manipulate our way to survival of the fittest.
Dorothy Height fought for women's reproductive rights with good intentions. She saw abortion and contraception rights as many women's rights activists did: a way of allowing women more freedom over their own bodies, especially in reproduction.
I doubt Height saw her civil rights work as turning into the mass marketing of eugenics to the demise of an already underprivileged community. I also do not think that the 40 percent of black women who attain abortions intentionally go out to murder their unborn children.
Abortion is something done because it is readily available because of the extremely large number of clinics nearby, and often propagated as the only way to survive when becoming pregnant in a low socioeconomic class.
Although I am pro-choice, there is no doubt black children are an endangered species; however, pro-choice means there should be some options associated. It should not be coerced in any way and should not fit into anyone's plans for population control.
Aisha Upton is a senior studying African American studies and Tuesday columnist for The Post. Talk reproductive choice with her at au173107@ohiou.edu.
4 Opinion
Aisha Upton
