"To that end, we might welcome the controversy about abortion and black babies and the long-overdue focus it brings to the black womb -- home to hope unbound as well as unspeakable tragedy. Who is responsible for the protection and care of this amazing uterine environment, where the most wonderful fetal programming can occur just by having a loving husband kiss his pregnant wife?"

 

Courtland Milloy, Washington Post, October 5.

 

The advantage of having lots of like-minded friends and many alert readers is that they provide me with materials I may have never seen or remind me of items I've read, stored away for future use, and then, alas, forgot. Such is the case with Courtland Milloy's October 5 column.

 

As I mentioned yesterday, the Washington Post has run two counter-intuitive [for the Post] pieces in the last month by current or former Post staffers. We talked about Patricia Bauer's impassioned argument against the lethal discrimination that is practiced against babies diagnosed to have various maladies.

 

Today we talk about Mr. Milloy's eye-opening column that appeared in the Metro section of the Post. I'm told that Mr. Milloy has a lot of credit in the African-American community, so what he had to say is very important. Forgive me for my oversight.

 

The controversy that triggered Mr. Milloy's discussion of abortion in the Black community need not detain us here. What it did was get him to thinking about the most recent data cranked out by Planned Parenthood's "special affiliate," the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI). What it says is staggering.

 

Black women have 2 1/2 times as many abortions as they are a percentage of the population. Put more clearly, African-American make up only 13% of the women of child-bearing ages (defined as 15-44), yet in 2002 accounted for almost exactly 1/3rd of the 1,293,000 abortions (32%) in the United States, according to AGI figures.

 

Milloy writes, "That's 413,760 abortions performed on black women in one year -- or 1,133 a day. (In the District, half of all pregnancies ended in abortion, a higher percentage than in any state.)." And then the kicker: "No outcry over that because those were just disposable fetuses, right?"

 

Much of the column is arguing an important point, though one not in our purview: that, in his opinion, some unspecified percentage of blacks do not get agitated about abortion until and unless they believe a white person is in favor of abortion. Then, "suddenly these fetuses become precious pre-born black people" who must be saved, he writes. But, from the perspective of saving unborn babies, we are happy that abortion may be beginning to have the kind of intra-community discussion it so richly deserves.
 
For years National Right to Life has had an outreach to Black Americans. Now under the guidance of Day Gardner, its impact and breadth of involvement is growing by the month.

 

Day is a knowledgeable, charismatic speaker, who is widely respected in the Black community. I have heard her many times, so I'm not speaking second hand.

 

She has much to work with. The bitter irony--paradox even--is that while Black women have a disproportionate percentage of abortions, the attitude of the African-American community is very pro-life.

 

Thus it's not as if respect for unborn life is something foreign to Black Americans. It is part and parcel of their community. And thoughtful contributions, wherever they come from, can only serve to help Day in her vitally important work.

 

I began this edition of TN&V with a quote from Mr. Milloy's column. There is, he writes. a "long-overdue focus" on "the black womb -- home to hope unbound as well as unspeakable tragedy."

 

Every time people of any race, ethnicity, or faith  tradition focus on the littlest American it accomplishes one of the absolutely most important goals of the Movement: upending apathy and uprooting ignorance. The results are that eyes are opened, ears unstopped, and hearts soften.