Abortion Kills More Black Americans Than the Seven Leading Causes of Death Combined, Says CDC Data
Abortion kills more black Americans than the seven leading causes of death combined, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2005, the latest year for which the abortion numbers are available.
Abortion killed at least 203,991 blacks in the 36 states and two cities (New York City and the District of Columbia) that reported abortions by race in 2005, according to the CDC. During that same year, according to the CDC, a total of 198,385 blacks nationwide died from heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases combined. These were the seven leading causes of death for black Americans that year.
Which serves as a pointed reminder that abortion absolutely should be the number one civil rights issue of our era, on the basis of racial equality in addition to that of the fundamental human right to life.
More on abortion: A Reasoned Pro-Life Argument.
8 comments:
Great point, Wes. On the scientific side of things, here's something for all of us to consider:
This appeared in the March 18, 2006 issue of New Scientist magazine, considered one of the premier secular science magazines:
"The task force finds that the new recombinant DNA technologies indisputably prove that the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."
Also, advanced ultrasound technology has revealed that the baby's heart begins beating around the 3rd week, the baby's brain waves can be measured by an EEG around the 6th week, and the baby's fingerprints are forming at the 8th week.
Apparently a lot of our liberal friends think that we are better off without all those black people. Yet they are supposedly the ones for "equal rights". It's profoundly sad.
To be against abortion is to deny self-ownership (of the woman over her own body) and is therefore unlibertarian. The "humanness" of the embryo/fetus is irrelevant to the question. Either we have sovereignty over our own bodies or we do not, period.
How can you, as a "libertarian", tell a woman who has been a victim of rape and become pregnant, that she has no right to decide what remains inside her body?
SE, have you considered the scientific evidence? If modern medical science, through DNA and ultrasound, has established that, at least biologically, the unborn is a fully formed human being, then we are discussing about a separate, biological entity right from the start. Does not a fully formed human being also retain a right to sovereignty and due process? Does not an unborn human, with a heart beat, brain waves, and fingerprints, very early on, possess inherent rights? Does it not possess a legitimate claim to life?
Now, your example of rape is a tragic, but extremely rare example. This is a heartbreaking circumstance, no doubt, yet it does not nullify the existence of a separate, individual life in the mother's womb.
I agree that human beings have sovereignty over their own bodies and a right to be free from coercion.
In the case of rape, it is the rapist who has violated that right by putting the fetus there, not the government which then must act to protect the fetus' life as it does the life of every other human being.
Again, you are totally right that it is tragic, unfair, unjust, and a violation of a woman's sovereignty over her own body that she has to bear a fetus and carry it to term.
But again, I insist that it is the rapist who is responsible for that violation by irrevocably forcing the victim to carry a human life, and not the state that is then obligated to protect that life.
Murder is murder. You would consider a woman punching herself in the stomach at 7 months wrong despite all this mumbo jumbo logic you present. Slurping the child out with a vaccum is just as bad......its just that you dont see the child as a human yet for your own selfish reasons.
Arguing that women should have absolute control of their bodies as a way to justify abortion is dishonest. It treats the fetus as no more than a tumor that needs excising.
And that's the key issue- the status of the fetus. What is it? I think the most reasonable position is that it is a human being.
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