Black Baby Billboards Beautiful, Not Racist

In a story in the Oakland Tribune this week, Race-specific anti-abortion billboards arrive in Oakland, NAACP California President Alice Huffman expressed concern that the campaign is racist. What do you think? Sidebar image from the billboard co-sponsor website, Radiance Foundation.

The billboard image and message strike me as a compelling, even loving, exhortation in support of black families. Since the billboard campaign is sponsored by blacks for blacks (co-sponsor Issues 4 Life) in defense of black children, how is it even possible for this to be a racist message? What if the subtitle is true? Are too many black babies aborted?

Abortion's racial disparity--higher rates of abortion among women of color--is an undisputed fact, as the Los Angeles Times reported in 2008. Yet black leaders' use of this data to sound the alarm is somehow racist. The pro-abortion rights researchers at Guttmacher Institute published an article in the Guttmacher Policy Review (Summer 2008, Volume 11, Number 3) which may have started the racism rhetoric ball rolling. Here's the opening line of the report Abortion and Women of Color: The Bigger Picture,

"This much is true: In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, have been waging a campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is the result of aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities."

All the data to support the claim of racial disparity is listed within the report, which clearly outlines a much higher rate of blacks aborted in proportion to the number of whites aborted. Yet the report concludes the problem is:

"...antiabortion pastors who appear intent on trying to protect minority women from themselves."

With all respect, no. Black pastors and others are trying to protect women from....abortion.

Reverend Denise Walker of Everlasting Light Ministries stated the problem and solution as she and her husband, Reverend Brian Walker shared the pain of abortion within their family at a rally for the 2011 Walk for Life West Coast. "We've lost forty percent of our population by abortion alone, I'm talking about African-Americans here," Walker said. "[W]e must end this slaughter in our land."

For the record, I am not an "antiabortion activist."

I am a woman who needed protection and help at a vulnerable time in my life who was not presented with any true alternative to abortion. I felt I had no choice. So I feel obliged to tell the truth about the harm abortion does to women, men, and children. And to expose the myth that women "need" abortion providers as their only available advocate. The idea that abortionists alone stand to help minority communities is absurd.

The reality is that the organizations sponsoring these billboards, and many other community groups are aiding women and families in Oakland and throughout the US to find help, encouragement, and support to choose life--even in the midst of the most difficult family circumstances. Radiance Foundation, Issues 4 Life and the National Black Prolife Coalition all stand ready to help you find the love you need--regardless of your color and the color of your child.

The "Black & Beautiful" billboards represent a strategic solution to raise awareness, to educate, and to reduce the rate of abortion in the black community.

So, what is really racist--encouraging and fostering new life among black families, or turning black women against their pastors and offering "help" to destroy their children who already exist?

How do you react?