Guest post by Paul Revere
In the aftermath of last week’s elections, much has been made of the demographic problem Republicans may face in coming elections. Black and Hispanic voters consistently give a majority of their votes to Democratic candidates, and this was especially true in 2012. With the Hispanic population expected to continue its substantial growth in America – it made up more than half of the growth in America’s population between 2000 and 2010, and grew by 43% in that time period, both according to the Census – many in the media have focused on this as a topic of discussion.
Unfortunately, one of those discussions included a very racist, and factually inaccurate, half-joke on MSNBC.
Well, according to Nancy Giles of CBS, her comment was intended fully as a joke, but it’s kind of hard to tell when watching her make the comment. Take a look for yourself, via Newsbusters, and let me know in the comments if you think she was kidding about white people trying to “build up the race” by opposing abortion:
Now, to be fair, Twitchy notes Giles has defended her comments on Twitter as part of her “nutty sense of humor.” Since she did appear to be half-serious in her comment, though, let’s take a look at some of the facts surrounding abortion.
First, let’s look at who has abortions. After all, Giles may think white people are having more abortions compared to all non-white Americans. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control, though, we can see black women had 40.2% of abortions in 2008, in the 35 areas that reported such statistics to the CDC. Also, according to the CDC (emphasis added):
Among the 28 areas that reported cross-classified race/ethnicity data for 2008 (Table 14), non-Hispanic white women and non-Hispanic black women accounted for 37.2% and 35.5% of all abortions. Hispanic women accounted for 21.1% of all abortions, and non-Hispanic women in the other races category accounted for 6.3%. Non-Hispanic white women had the lowest abortion rates (8.7 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years) and ratios (140 abortions per 1,000 live births), whereas non-Hispanic black women had the highest abortion rates (33.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years) and ratios (472 abortions per 1,000 live births). Among the 24 areas that reported by race/ethnicity both in 2007 and 2008, increases in abortion rates and ratios were somewhat greater for non-Hispanic black women than for non-Hispanic white women and Hispanic women. Abortion rates increased 10% for non-Hispanic black women (from 32.2 abortions per 1,000 women in 2007 to 35.4 in 2008), 5% for non-Hispanic white women (from 8.6 abortions per 1,000 women in 2007 to 9.0 in 2008), and 2% for Hispanic women (from 20.0 abortions per 1,000 women in 2007 to 20.4 in 2008). Similarly abortion ratios increased 4% among non-Hispanic black women (from 481 abortions per 1,000 live births in 2007 to 501 in 2008), whereas they were more stable for non-Hispanic white women (at 145 abortions per 1,000 live births in 2007 and 144 in 2008) and for Hispanic women (at 201 abortions per 1,000 live births in 2007 to 196 in 2008). Because 2007 was the first year for which cross-classified race/ethnicity data were compiled, longer term trends could not be evaluated.
Clearly, black Americans are having far more abortions than white Americans. And the rate as compared to the population is slowly growing in black communities.
But perhaps the CDC’s facts are misrepresenting the situation. After all, it is well-known that the CDC’s statistics on abortion are inferior to that of the Guttmacher Institute, the former research arm of Planned Parenthood. The report referenced above admits that the CDC typically reports about two-thirds of the abortions Guttmacher reports, for example. Therefore, it is instructive to see that an August 2011 Guttmacher Institute report shows non-Hispanic white women had 36% of abortions, and black and Hispanic women had 30% and 25% of abortions, respectively. This means that a majority of abortions were had by non-white women. Considering that the 2010 Census found 64% of Americans are white, 13% of Americans are black, and 16% are Hispanic, this means the shrinking white majority in America is killing off its future at about one-quarter the relative rate of black Americans, and about one-third the relative rate of Hispanics.
So now we’ve established that Giles’ “joke” about white people opposing abortion to “build up” the race is false. In fact, white people should support more abortions in order to maintain ethnic and racial dominance.
If this is the case, Republicans should be gung-ho for abortion. After all, the party gets the majority of white voters and loses the majority of minority voters. Except this is negated by the fact that earlier this year Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank attacked Republicans – especially white Republican Representative Trent Franks of Arizona – in one of his columns for risking the Asian-American vote by pushing legislation that would ban sex-selective abortions, which Milbank admits are most common in the Asian-American community. (Huffington Post also reports that Guttmacher has said sex-selective abortions may indeed be taking place, though the admission is highly qualified.)
Oh, and it’s also negated by the fact that most Republicans oppose abortion in most or all cases. The pro-abortion crowd is in the Democratic Party.
Related to this, it was the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) that met with the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus earlier this year to discuss how effective the pro-life movement has been within the black community, as Jill noted in an interview with HotAir.com. And I can assure you that the CBC was not celebrating the successes of the pro-life movement. So even the black-centric Caucus on Capitol Hill wants more abortions, abortions that kill off its future progeny at a much faster rate than white Americans’ abortions do.
So, to recap, Giles’ “joke” is tasteless, factually inaccurate, and racist. However, let’s look at one more thing: the host of the show, Melissa Harris-Perry, followed Giles’ comments with a half-hearted “Well, there is all these eugenics associated with abortion, right?” Considering that the founder of Planned Parenthood was a racist eugenicist, and Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the country, it could be argued that eugenics are indeed involved with abortion… but not from the pro-life side of things.
Paul Revere is the pseudonym of a D.C.-based political blogger. He has contributed to Race42012.com, American Thinker, Conservative Home USA, and Reason Foundation’s Out of Control blog.
by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN and Kelli
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.