Posted on 09/23/2003 6:12:31 PM PDT by madprof98
Abortion.
Time and time again, I hear it's not a black issue; from my black friends on Capitol Hill, to Howard students who seemingly believe white women have the monopoly on abortion, to even my Pan-Africanism professor.
As black people, we care about education, politics, civil rights and racial profiling. We think hard about taxes, affirmative action, economic empowerment and redlining.
But in a country where black women continue to rank near the bottom of the pay scale, among other indignities, we are hard pressed to consider women's rights a black issue.
In the heart of the women's liberation struggle, black women were shunned in our community if we so decided to fight for our equality. We were told that we were selling out by joining the "white women's movement" and should be more concerned with "black issues" than "women's issues."
The problem is that being a black woman is a double burden.
While the mentality that "women's rights" don't translate into "black women's rights" is outdated, unfortunately, it's still prevalent.
And it's exemplified in our thinking on abortion. According to NARAL, factors ranging from discrimination to socioeconomic constraints prevent minority and low-income women from full access to many reproductive health care options, including contraceptives.
Black women are three times more likely than white women to have an unintended pregnancy and subsequently three times more likely to have an abortion.
Black women are also more likely to obtain riskier abortions late in their pregnancies, after 16 weeks.
And what's more, it's an important issue to us. A Women of Color Reproductive Health Poll showed that 83 percent of African American women identify as pro-choice. Meanwhile, the government is becoming increasingly anti-choice.
This week the Senate passed a "partial-birth" abortion ban outlawing late-term abortion in all cases. The Senate is also scheduled to review the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act." An attack on abortion, the act aims to recognize an embryo as a person with rights separate and apart from the woman. The next step would be to consider abortion murder, undermining a woman's constitutional right to choose.
The Senate is also expected to hear the "Abortion Non-Discrimination Act," which would allow health-care companies and HMOs to restrict abortion-related services. And to top it all off, President Bush continues to push abstinence-only programs- which have reached a record funding level of $135 million-so that more women go uneducated and become trapped by unwanted pregnancies.
Often our community is blinded by what we are told are important issues, moral and religious issues and what we are told are "white issues."
But to say that abortion is not a black women's issue is to discount the reproductive problems we face and the statistics that prove it.
So, while the CBC, the NAACP, the Urban League and every other black organization fights for the "black community," they should remember that more than half that community is female. And we have issues too.
An internationally published journalist, Anderson is a senior journalism major and the former editor-in-chief of The Hilltop. Email thehilltop_eic@yahoo.com.
Agreed, but I know one thing for certain ... I graduated almost 20 years ago from a college that was known to have one of the finest journalism schools in the country at the time, and yes, I was a journalism major. Some of my classmates have moved on to some high profile positions in the journalism community; Jason Blair, is the tip of the iceberg. While there are many fine journalists out there; there are also far too many "bad apples" out there, but, as in any professions, journalists are hesitant to "eat their own"
She's "fine" in the sense of "slick," but she is anything but "honest," as the content of the piece makes very clear.
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