After an anti-choice organization placed, and ultimately pulled, a New York billboard with the message “The Most Dangerous Place for an African American is in The Womb,” the group is now posting similar billboards in Chicago featuring President Obama. Jill Stanek, a radical anti-choice blogger, details the group Life Always and its new billboard in Obama’s hometown that reads: “Every 21 Minutes, Our Next Possible Leader Is Aborted.” Stanek writes that “Tomorrow, March 29, over 30 pro-life billboards will be unveiled on Chicago’s south side, where residents are predominantly black.”
The “Abortion as Black Genocide” theme in the anti-choice community continues to grow, with legislators even pushing bans on so-called “race-based abortion.” Kathryn Joyce of Political Research Associates explains:
Recent studies by the Guttmacher Institute found that abortion rates are indeed higher among women of color. African Americans, in particular, are thirteen percent of the population but account for 37 percent of all abortions. However, Guttmacher determined, this is due to their greater incidence of unwanted pregnancies, resulting from economic inequality and poor access to contraception and education. Nonetheless, the anti-abortion movement holds that Black and brown populations are being targeted – rather than served – by abortion providers who deliberately place clinics in inner-city, low-income neighborhoods.
