The Hidden Black Genocide in America

June 22, 2020

“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” Such a simple sentence, yet it has rattled America to its core. Ever since George Floyd’s tragic death on May 25, our nation’s streets have been flooded with protests seeking justice. From Minnesota to California to Washington, D.C., the common thread uniting these desperate cries is black lives are not to be trivialized or thrown away. There is no denying grave injustice has been done. There is pain, suffering, and death now on display.

This is heart-wrenching.

George Floyd’s on-camera death set the nation ablaze for justice. However, city streets aren’t the only places black lives are vulnerable. Every day, women enter abortion facilities believing them to be their only hope for help and answers. Every day, abortionists feed these women lies about what is growing within them. Every day, these lies silence another child’s life. As if this were not sorrowful enough, abortion providers specifically target and prey upon low-income, minority communities. Seventy-nine percent of abortion clinics in the United States are located in black or Hispanic neighborhoods.

The placement of these clinics is a conscious choice. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger advocated for eugenics, especially through the use of birth control. In a letter to Clarence Gamble, she wrote this heinous sentence, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Today, abortions of black babies make up 38 percent of all abortions, even though African Americans only make up 13 percent of the population. In 2016 alone, 137,510 black lives were ended under the “right to privacy” called abortion. Dr. La Verne Tolbert, former Planned Parenthood board member turned pro-life advocate, commented on this alarmingly high rate of black abortions: “Planned Parenthood targets minorities for abortion with the specific goal of keeping down (or lowering) the birthrate of Black babies…. Over twenty million African American babies have been aborted.”

Consider this. After discovering that she is pregnant, a young single black woman goes to a medical office. She sits down with the doctor and is informed of her options. She makes the difficult choice to keep the baby, knowing full well she may face enormous hardships ahead. She carries her baby to term and has a beautiful baby boy. He grows up like any other child might in a single-parent household, but his mother is determined to provide the best opportunities she can for him. Through enormous sacrifices on his mother’s part and hard work on his part, the young man makes it through school and even graduates from college. From there, he can start his own family and lead a life better than what his mother could have dreamed of. In her advanced years, he now has the resources to provide and take care of her in the same way she did for him when he was young.

Or maybe the story does not end happily. Perhaps the void from the lack of a true father figure in this young boy’s life consumes his perspective. The negative effects of a fatherless home might take hold, and the son is never able to move beyond the years of economic poverty that have plagued his community. In either case, this boy is a human, one who gets to make these choices, one who gets to live a life in this beautiful but messed-up world. Statistically, however, he likely will never get this chance. From what we know, the most likely outcome is that abortion silences this young man’s life before he even has the chance to breathe. 

Unfortunately, this story is far from fiction. Every day, young single black mothers are fed the consistent lie that they cannot do this on their own. That unless they end their unborn child’s life, their dreams and goals cannot be accomplished. But the truth is, what’s inside the mother’s womb is not just a clump of cells, nor is it part of her body. It is another human just waiting for the opportunity to live in the world. Of course, all people will face trials and difficult circumstances, much like the trying times our nation faces today, but that is not all there is to life. There are so many thousands of blessings, large and small, that help us appreciate life, and when it comes down to it, we would not give them for the world. Things like a mother’s hug, a hot cup of coffee, a beautiful sunset, the birth of a child, and so much more. Yet, hundreds of thousands of innocent babies will never get to experience these wonders every year. What is worse is that a disproportionately large number of those are black babies who will never get to make a difference and influence the culture for positive change. 

George Floyd’s death serves as a clarion call for justice—justice not only for those we can physically see but also for those we cannot yet see. Unlike a death on the street captured on video, abortion is hidden away and sterilized under mountains of lies, paperwork, and medical waste bins stashed in the back alleys of abortion facilities. Yet abortion is responsible for the vacuum left by the millions of black Americans who never got their chance to live a life. Abortion is the hidden black genocide in America. Will America continue to tolerate such injustice?

Quinn Roberts is a Policy/Government Affairs intern at Family Research Council.