John R. Lott, Jr. and Sonya D. Jones, reporters for Fox News, have written an unusually enlightening article -- unusual in that the facts they present (though well-documented and very important) hardly ever get the attention they deserve. My heartiest commendations then to them and to Fox News for telling Americans the following:* Margaret Sanger advocated using birth control, sterilization, and abortion to weed out "the problem of the dependent, delinquent and defective elements in modern society."
* “80 percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority neighborhoods.”
* Planned Parenthood performed 22% of all abortions in 2005 (260,000 out of 1.2 million abortions).
* Blacks do, indeed, have much higher rates of abortions than whites or other minority groups. In 2000, while blacks made up 17 percent of live births, they made up more than twice that share of abortions (36 percent). If those aborted children had been born, the number of blacks born would have been slightly over 50 percent greater than it was.
The comparison with whites and other minorities is striking. Whites made up 78 percent of live births, but only 57 percent of abortions. Non-black minorities had 7 percent of live births and 5 percent of abortions. If the aborted children had been born for either group, the percentage increase in the number of children born to these groups would have been less than that for blacks: 16 and 32 percent, respectively.
Data from 1973 on indicate that black women's share of abortions has consistently been at least twice their share of live births.
* Professor Jonathan Klick at the Florida State University Law School and Professor Thomas Stratmann at George Mason University authored a recent study claiming that Roe v. Wade increased premarital sex by as much as 25 percent, because the option of ending unwanted pregnancies through abortion made sex less risky.
* The Centers for Disease Control recorded detailed information on the race of those having abortions from 1970 to 1981. It shows Roe’s impact on abortions by blacks in the years immediately before and after the decision. The Supreme Court’s decision had the biggest impact on blacks, raising their share of abortions from 21 to 30 percent, while their share of live births only increased from 12 to 15 percent.
Obviously, numerous factors may explain the changes over time in abortion rates for different racial groups. But even after accounting for other influences on the decision to have an abortion — such as per capita income, the size of welfare payments, unemployment rates and unemployment insurance payments, and the age and gender distribution of the population — white women's share of abortions still fell by almost 7 percent after Roe.
Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comments about the large differences in abortion rates between black women and women who aren't black.
Good reporting, guys!
