The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Black activists look to Trump, GOP in the fight against abortion
WASHINGTON » Donald Trump’s harsh comments about women, Hispanics and Muslims was not the reason that Catherine Davis declined to support him for president.
It was her uncertainty about exactly where the Republican businessman stood on the issue that Davis, a 64-year-old African-American, says is the most important one facing the black community: abortion.
“If we don’t have life, then all the other issues pale,” Davis said. “Education doesn’t matter, criminal justice reform doesn’t matter, if you cannot make it out of the womb.”
Davis was energized this week as she joined thousands of antiabortion activists in Washington for the annual March for Life, where Vice President Mike Pence and presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway affirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to an antiabortion agenda.
Black women have the highest rate of abortion than any other group, a statistic that Davis and other black antiabortion activists say is the result of a deliberate targeting of the black community. Those who support reproductive rights point to a lack of access to preventive health care among poor black women. They say they also are concerned about the high rate but argue that legal abortion should remain an option for all women.
The crowd at the march was overwhelmingly white, as are the political leaders, organizations and grass-roots activists associated with the antiabortion movement. But Davis, working alone and with others, have long encouraged African-Americans to be more vocal and visible in the fight against abortion.
For the first time in a long while, Davis is optimistic that her side will have the upper hand in the debate, especially on her specific goal of defunding Planned Parenthood.
The new White House, along with the Republican Congress, “are communicating clearly a pro-life agenda, and that excites me because it at least gives me an opportunity to be at the table to persuade them to take some steps to stop Planned Parenthood from targeting black women,” Davis said as she made her way along Constitution Avenue on Friday en route to the pre-march rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument.
Several years ago, Davis and other activists drew fire for a billboard campaign in some major cities that featured the faces of AfricanAmerican children, with messages such as “Black children are an endangered species” and “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” They also have criticized Black Lives Matter activists, who have focused on the slayings of African-Americans by police, as being hypocrites for not speaking against abortion.
According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s abortion surveillance report for 2013, in 29 states that have reported abortion data, black women had the highest abortion rate at 27 abortions per 1,000 woman, compared with 7.2 procedures per 1,000 white women and 13.8 abortions per 1,000 Hispanic women.
Michelle Batchelor, deputy director of In Our Own Voice, a reproductive rights organization, said the billboard campaign was “hurtful.”
“We understand that some people do not agree with abortion and what we try to emphasize is that’s fine, but don’t interfere with our choice,” said Batchelor. “We trust black women to make the choices that are best for their bodies, best for their families and best for their long-term future,” she said.
A Pew report on abortion published earlier this month showed that 57 percent of the public believes that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, including 58 percent of whites and 62 percent of blacks.