The Truth About Abortion and Black America

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 Life poll 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.

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Dialing Down the Sound of Fury

High-pitched conservative rhetoric seems to be even more shrill than usual lately; some even blame it for the recent slaying of Dr. George Tiller, the Kansas physician who performed late-term abortions and was gunned down at his church May 31.

Some Republicans are having second thoughts about the level of negative political rhetoric they have been spouting as of late. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. (1979-99), retrenched on what he recently said about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor being a racist.

Sotomayor will be the first Latina on the high court if confirmed.

It’s about time foes dialed down their fury. Maybe Gingrich realizes that he is the one who came off looking like a racist when he attacked her; then again, maybe not. Regardless, Gingrich’s half-apology comes too late and the damage might already be done.

“No party has a monopoly on saying things that are offensive at times,” said Audrey A. Haynes, an associate professor of political science at The University of Georgia. “But there is general consensus that the Republican Party, thanks to its use of wordsmith practioners and marketing gurus, has done a much better job, at least in the past, of controlling the discourse, framing the political conflicts, and being much more aggressive than the Democrats have been.”

When President Obama campaigned for the Oval Office, he vowed to help change the climate of political dialogue in Washington and beyond. In light of recent events this past week, it seems that this is a promise he won’t be able to keep.

But not because he hasn’t tried.

It was Obama who chose to deliver the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame over historically black Morehouse College. He could have taken the easier path by going to Morehouse, where the first black president would likely have been lovingly welcomed with open arms; instead he went to Notre Dame where he was heckled during a speech that called for greater understanding and fair-mindedness on all sides of the abortion issue.

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