CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
June 10, 2009 – 12:26 a.m.
Abortion and Black Voters
By Tracie Powell, CQ Guest Columnist
I sat trying to figure out how I would cover law school costs this fall when my phone rang. It was a campaign worker with a reminder that Virginia voters had a Democratic primary election this week and I had yet to decide who would get my vote.
It was the typical campaign call, nothing really remarkable about it. The worker wanted to know if I planned to support a conservative — not Republican — candidate at the polls. “Are you African American?” she asked. I replied in the affirmative. “I know that many African American voters are conservative when it comes to social issues like abortion. Would you describe the candidate you plan to support as conservative on the issue of abortion?”
In recent years conservative political strategists have painted African Americans as being more opposed to abortion than the white population. They have cited numbers as high as 59 percent.
But a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Lifepoll found that 49 percent of black Americans — considered more religious than the U.S. population as a whole — favor keeping abortion legal in most or all cases; just 44 percent of black Americans want abortion to be illegal in most or all cases.
Experts say there is declining black support for conservative social policies like abortion. The reasons vary.
Christopher J. Metzler, an associate dean at Georgetown University who writes regularly on issues of race and politics, attributes the drop-off in support to pressing economic conditions that black Americans face.
The unemployment rate for African American workers is now at 14.9 percent, almost double the national average. “It’s just not one of our top issues,” said Metzler.
The campaign call I received came nearly two weeks after Dr. George Tiller was gunned down at his Kansas church, and an anti-abortion activist was charged with his murder.
On June 9, Tiller’s family announced they would close his clinic, meaning there are no abortion providers left in the Wichita area, and only two other clinics in the country that perform late-term abortions, which was Tiller’s area of expertise.
Closing an abortion clinic will hardly draw outcry from black Americans, but Metzler said it will continue to increase awareness of hypocrisies surrounding conservative social causes.
“Conservatives had used abortion as a wedge issue to divide the black community, but the effectiveness of that movement is now starting to erode,” he said. “We see the hypocrisy of choosing whose life is valuable and whose life is not, and we are unable to resolve that hypocrisy.”
Many black Americans, Metzler said, had already started questioning the anti-abortion agenda because they weren’t getting any support from conservatives in return. “It was a one-way street,” he said. “We see the number of children, the significant number of African American children, who end up in the system and in foster care, but we hear nothing from these same people who talk about abortion so fervently, in terms of how to help these kids.
“And we wonder where all these conservative voices are when so many African Americans are being executed via the death penalty. Not to compare one to the other, but we had already started to see the hypocrisy before Tiller’s murder, and we were already rejecting the hypocrisy in very large numbers.”
For some African Americans, the ambiguity about abortion goes deeper than current economic and social realities. This is particularly true for black women writes Salamishah Tillet, founder of A Long Walk Home, a nonprofit organization that documents and seeks to end violence against underserved women and children.
“The roots of reproductive injustice for black women,” Tillet said, “date back to the nation’s founding, for enslaved women had no control of their reproductive rights and often were forced to bear children in order to replenish their slave master’s labor force.”
Reproductive injustices continue to adversely impact African American women via underfunding of adequate family planning programs, lack of access to inexpensive, readily available contraception, and legislation such as the Hyde Amendment that denies low-income women — disproportionately black and Hispanic — full access to safe and affordable abortions, Tillet said. A reversal of the 1975 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, she added, would adversely impact African American women, harkening back to a time when slave owners controlled their reproductive freedom.
I doubt most Americans, including those who are black, consider abortion a civil rights issue, and I’m not arguing that it should be.
I do know that while black Americans remain one of the most religious demographics in the country, this isn’t the 1960s and African Americans no longer march lock-step behind the church.
I also know that when the campaign worker called I was busy worrying over how I would pay college tuition this fall and put food on the table later that night. I wanted to say that abortion, at this point in time, just doesn’t fit on my plate.
But I fought the urge to tell the pollster any of these things.
Instead I quietly waited for her to finish, responded that I wasn’t sure who I would vote for but that I would take time before the election to figure it out — and I thanked her for the call.
Tracie Powell is a former congressional fellow with the American Political Science Association and writes regularly on politics and policy.
Comments
I personally am against abortion. I consider it the taking of a life. Period. When people use abortion as a birth control device, then they have diminished the very concept of what life is in my opinion. Further, if they use it as a birth control device, then they are being selfish. This is not to take away the legitimate reasons for choosing an abortion...and my definition of "legitimate" may very well differ from another. But, we as Black people have had our entire history read red with the blood of aborted lives and detoured options. For us to dilute any Black life to a mere procedure is not a very good thing for the future of our people. If one CHOOSES to abort, then that will be their cross to bear. I am not going to tell you that you cannot, nor will I insist that the government do so either; I will however try to convince you that there may be better options for both the mother and the baby than to invoke the inconvenience of the consequence of their choice to have sex in a matter that would produce an unwanted life. I will urge you to consider these other options before you (in my heart) place a stain on your heart that may not be erased. Note: I have no personal problem with abortion in the cases of incest and rape...
Tracie, wedge-issues are polarizing, and America is polarized, largely because of this sort of thing. The Fundies don't want to let this issue die - and the roots of *that* situation are their long-held belief that America is a 'Christian nation', rather than a secular republic. Never underestimate the power of a well-organized small group.
[edited to compensate for 2-finger typing] I just love it when people say they are "against abortion" or paint the issue as if women with loose morals use abortion as a form of contraception. First, I don't know ANYONE who is "for" abortion. the point isn't whether your individual moral platform is better of more righteous than another's. We live in a secular society and as such I am protected from YOUR particular form of self-righteous moral indignation. Shoot, I am certainly "against" abortion! LOL! JesusFuckinChrist! However, I am for the right of women's reproductive freedoms. what I think means shit when it comes to someone else's freedom. If you're against abortion, then don't have one! if you're against gay marriage, DON'T MARRY ONE! THAT'S the issue. I think, coming back to the gist of the article, that it depends on how pollsters frame the question. If you ask ANYONE if they are for or against abortion, I would think the vast majority of Americans, regardless of political orientation, gender, and class, would say they are against. HOWEVER (and here's where i think journalists are missing the point), if you frame the question in terms of women's rights and reproductive freedom, polls will yield different results. MOST Americans favor reproductive rights because it goes against our national psyche to impose our will on others. we don't like Holy rollers telling us what to do, especially in light of hypocrisy and indiscretions by the same. BTW, the "abortion as contraception" argument is a dishonest one to begin with. It's a bullshit argument. It's a dishonest way to frame the discussion and tilt toward a neocon agenda.
Once again, I read wisdom in your words. I am yet another human being that does not find favor with abortion, BUT, I do not favor taking the right to choose from a woman. Thank you for including the words of Dean Metzler which clarify some of the hypocrisy in this entire abortion and sanctity of life argument.
Nice.
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