On the way home from school today I was listing to NPR and heard this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p006czyf (start listing at about 26:35) story on BBC News Hour. It is a story about how anti abortion activists are starting a new campaign claiming that groups like Planned parenthood are targeting African American women for abortions to reduce their population.
There is an interview with a representative of planned parenthood who talks about the work they do with low income people in inner cities to give them the choice of when to have a child. The other interview is with a member of the Georgia right to life group who happens to be a niece of Martin Luther King Jr. After he initial claims of "just knowing" this is happening she doesn't really back it up and starts going back to the normal antiabortionist lines about the rights of the child.
What do you think about this story? Also do you think that the right to life activist is using her family's historical importance to sway this argument?
There is an interview with a representative of planned parenthood who talks about the work they do with low income people in inner cities to give them the choice of when to have a child. The other interview is with a member of the Georgia right to life group who happens to be a niece of Martin Luther King Jr. After he initial claims of "just knowing" this is happening she doesn't really back it up and starts going back to the normal antiabortionist lines about the rights of the child.
What do you think about this story? Also do you think that the right to life activist is using her family's historical importance to sway this argument?
This is absolutely the most preposterous and (if considered rationally) the most unethical pro-life tactic yet. I was fuming when I heard this especially already having negative feelings about Alveda King (because of her using "MLK as my uncle" as a tool to advocate for Prop 8 in California). In the spirit of my argument being a logical one, I will not succumb to straw man tactics, so I will move on.
Speaking of logical fallacies, there were a few egregious uses in this short BBC segment. Most importantly there was the classic fallacy that Psychologists should never be guilty of, the "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" better known as correlation not inferring causation. In the article, King says that Planned Parenthood is targeting African Americans because there are more Planned Parenthoods in urban areas where more African Americans live. The assumption that planned parenthood has many offices in urban areas in order to target African Americans for abortions disregards the mediation of S.E.S. as a variable, and dismisses many elements of Planned Parenthood (providing reproductive counseling, options, and services to those without insurance or underinsured).
King's argument also equates abortion to genocide, and in this instance, the disproportionate amount of African American abortions to be genocide directed at African American. “Womb lynching” was the phrase used as to allow for a connection to the civil rights movement. This tactic trivializes genocide, it trivializes the African American plight throughout American history, and it trivializes the role of the woman in this process. It falsely presents Planned Parenthood's mission as that of a eugenics movement in order to undermine their credibility in the African American community. It once again ignores the more important information that African Americans are more disproportionately uninsured and without access to healthcare and contraceptives. It further ignores information that shows fertility rates are equal for both Caucasians and African Americans in the U.S., so there really is no systemic genocide going on.
Finally, the intent of tying abortion to the civil rights movement to emotionally arouse the African American community is devious. It is more or less a shameless bastardization of the principles of the civil rights movement. In fact, the pro-choice movement would have more of a claim to this analogy. For one, African American women are disproportionately in poverty, uninsured and underinsured compared to Caucasian women. This means they don't have equal access to women health services, including both contraceptives AND prenatal care should they decide to keep the child. Right to reproductive choice is at stake in this debate. In the spirit of Civil Rights, doesn't this revocation of rights count as a violation of sorts?
In conclusion, this plea of victimization in order to advance the pro-life movement is despicable. It plays on the stereotypes as African American women as being helpless, uneducated and therefore vulnerable to “abortionists” all in the name of a cause which will take their rights away. And finally, it ignores more important and pressing issues of system inequalities, a fact that was central to the Reverend King’s life work.