Margaret Sanger died in 1966, but her legacy did not die with her. If anything it metastasized like the moral cancer it is. It did so with the help of Gloria Steinem, 32 years old and already a Women’s activist the day Sanger died. Because of efforts by Miss Steinem, her fellow travelers and a Supreme Court untethered to the Constitution, abortions became just another method of birth control. This slaughter peaked in the United States at 1.55 million in 1980. According to the National Institute of health:
There were 1.55 million abortions in 1980, about 1/4 of all pregnancies and 1/2 of unintended ones. About 3% of women of childbearing age obtained an abortion. The rate increased by 2% from 1979 to 1980, compared to an increase of 4% over the previous 2 years.
Read: Abortion Services in the United States, 1979 and 1980
Steinem had stepped solidly into Sanger’s shoes, casting abortion as a matter of sexual freedom for women and a liberation from the tyranny of their husbands. The Spring 1972 Edition of Ms. Magazine (founded by Steinem, had an article entitled, Women Tell the Truth About Their Abortions. In this edition, famous women such as Billie Jean King, talked about their abortions and encouraged others to do the same by filling out an enclosed card and sending it into the magazine. New York Magazine discussed this in what they billed is an “Oral History” session with some of the founders of Ms. Magazine, including Miss Steinem.
From the New Yorker article (note: the clip includes the link to the New Yorker article and a link to a photo of the relevant article in the 1972 Ms piece:
Feature: “We Have Had Abortions”
A statement signed by 53 women, including singer Judy Collins; tennis champion Billie Jean King; and writers Susan Sontag, Grace Paley, Anaïs Nin, Patricia Bosworth, Barbara W. Tuchman, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Gloria Steinem. The article included a card that invited women to fill in their own names and send it in to the magazine.
Read: How Do You Spell Ms.
Steinem, along with the efforts of other activists, was attempting to normalize the killing of the unborn and justify it as liberating women from involuntary servitude. The idea is that absent their role (rapidly becoming unnecessary via science) in paternity, men were pretty much non-essential and that things would be a lot better if women were in charge and men should just shut up.
The United States Supreme Court decided the issue in Roe v Wade in January 1973. That gave legal cover for the fiction that this procedure somehow did not involve an innocent life. It was merely some “right to privacy” hidden in and amongst “penumbras and emanations.”
The left, led by Steinem and others took that decision and ran with it. Abortions in the United States took off, peaking, as I indicated above, in 1980. One Million, Five Hundred and Fifty Thousand innocent lives. I would note that we shut an entire country down for a far lesser casualty count — something about as lethal as the annual flu — all for the purported reason of helping women escape from male domination. How has that worked out…for Black babies?
The Wall Street Journal has some information that might shock you:
Nationally, black women terminate pregnancies at far higher rates than other women as well. In 2014, 36% of all abortions were performed on black women, who are just 13% of the female population. The little discussed flip side of “reproductive freedom” is that abortion deaths far exceed those via cancer, violent crime, heart disease, AIDS and accidents. Racism, poverty and lack of access to health care are the typical explanations for these disparities. But black women have much higher abortion rates even after you control for income. Moreover, other low-income ethnic minorities who experience discrimination, such as Hispanics, abort at rates much closer to white women than black women.
Read: Let’s Talk About the Black Abortion Rate
The article continues:
The more plausible explanation may have to do with marriage. Unmarried women are more likely to experience an unintended pregnancy, and black women are less likely than their white, Asian and Hispanic counterparts to marry. It’s true that many of these would-be partners are sitting in prison, but it’s also true that this racial divide in marriage, which started in the 1960s and has grown ever since, predates the “mass incarceration” of black men that took off in the 1980s.
“Less likely to marry.” I wonder how that came about? What we have here is a confluence of two major leftist campaigns. These campaigns are harmful in general, but have had an outsized effect on Blacks (so far). We have the “Great Society” removing Black males from their position as the breadwinner of the Black Family. If that were not enough to “liberate the Black female, then offering the free access to abortion on demand as the follow-on was, finally removing any need for Black male leadership. What, then, is the role of the Black male? What, then, is the role for any male if we take this construct to its fullest? The answer to that is, “There is no role for the male according to current leftist/feminist dogma. ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ are just made up constructs.” Stay tuned.
Other articles in this series:
Opinion: Black Lives Matter, Just Not To Democrat Politicians (Part I)
Opinion: Black Lives Matter, Just Not To Democrat Politicians (Part II, Minimum Wage and Union Vote Buying)
Opinion: Black Lives Matter, Just Not to Democrat Politicians (Part III, War on Poverty and Welfare State)
Opinion: Black Lives Matter, Just Not To Democrat Politicians: (Part IV, Fatherlessness, Poverty and Crime)
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