“This is the civil rights struggle that will define our generation,” says Rep. Trent Franks.
Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011 criminalizes abortion on the grounds of race or sex. Doctors could be imprisoned for not determining if the race or sex of the baby influenced the mother’s decision to abort. The object of the bill is to protect the rights of the minority and females against this bias. The catch is, if abortionists are innocent of such bias the Act will not affect their “business”; but if they are guilty of deliberately performing abortions on the minority, it will stop them from abusing the rights of the abortion victims. This bill ensures that the rights of minority and female babies are the same as those of white male babies.
Yet there are some civil rights’ groups who have a bone to pick with those who would defend these babies’ rights. Ironically, it is the minority and women’s rights groups especially who are fighting against the bill’s name and the bill itself. Opponents of the bill include the NAACP, the National Council of Jewish Women and 45 other U.S. civil rights groups. They say that the two great civil rights leaders have nothing to with discrimination in the womb.
In response, Rep. Steve Chabot quotes a famous speech of Susan B. Anthony’s; “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.”
The defenders of the bill claim that the Democrats opposed to the Act are arguing about the name of the bill to distract from the main issue, that babies are aborted on grounds of race and sex.
These Democrats and civil rights’ groups assure us that this never takes place. The reason they give for the extremely high number of African-American abortions is that their rate of unintended pregnancy is 67%, while that of white women is 40%. It is true that 37% of abortions are of African Americans, and 66% of all abortions are obtained by non-white women.[1] However, it is also true that organizations like Planned Parenthood are particularly targeting these racial groups. (Link to http://liveaction.org/planned-parenthood-racism-project). Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and a pro-life civil rights advocate, says, “The most obvious practitioner of racism in the United States today is Planned Parenthood, an organization founded by the eugenicist Margaret Sanger and recently documented as ready to accept money to eliminate black babies.”
Sex-selective abortions undeniably take place in America, especially among immigrant groups.[2] In Indian American communities, women are maltreated for carrying female babies.[3]
The civil rights’ groups stated, “We are very concerned to see the fight against discrimination being misappropriated to push a bill that does nothing to combat sex and race discrimination, but instead imposes additional barriers on women in the United States.”
If such discrimination does not take place, then how would the Act impose additional barriers on women?
A Zogby/USA Today poll shows that 86% of Americans agree that abortions based on race and sex are immoral.[4] Why, then, do the “defenders of the American people” oppose this bill, which will outlaw such abortions?
Any abortion abuses the victim’s rights and thus is unendurable. Yet abortions which specifically target non-white babies or children of an undesired sex are especially intolerable. Although equal civil rights are available for both male and female, black and white, racism is still on the large and targeting the smallest, least-defended people – the unborn. How long will pro-choice civil rights’ groups close their eyes and ears to such abuse?
