Pro-abortion author Rosalind Pollack Petchesky writes about how poor minority women are sometimes pressured to have abortions:
Especially in locales with large concentrations of poor blacks, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, Chicanos, and Native Americans, a more serious problem regarding abortion may stem, not from its denial, but from its forced imposition.…
They [minority women who became pregnant] report that poor women of color may find that a positive pregnancy test automatically results in an aggressive attempt to persuade them to undergo abortion. Instead of being offered a choice, they are presumed to be too poor or too young or to have too many children already to bear a child.
This is in part a function of the population control mentality, but it also reflects economic interests. In profit-making abortion establishments, Medicaid reimbursement and unregulated fee schedules operate as an incentive to some doctors to process as many abortion cases as possible.
Rosalind Pollack Petchesky Abortion and Woman’s Choice: The State, Sexuality & Reproductive Freedom (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990) 161
