A new report finds that there were more than 16,000 additional births in Texas in 2022 — more than 13,000 of them to Hispanic women — and wrongly concludes that the state’s Heartbeat Act helped drive an increase in Hispanic children and prevented what would have been a further decline in black and white births.
The report, by the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, notes that Hispanic women were “especially affected” by the pro-life law and face “more challenges” in accessing “abortion.” The community, the lead author said, should discuss “how this affects individuals.”
Did you catch that? This is the lie perpetuated for decades by abortion advocates: the dark distortion that you can help minority populations by reducing their number. Instead of celebrating the additional births, the scholars’ underlying conclusion was subtle and horrific — the expansion of minority populations is a problem in need of a solution. It reeks of racism.
Planned Parenthood Founded by ‘Eugenicist’
Unfortunately, this sentiment is unsurprising. Its roots date back to the founder of Planned Parenthood herself, Margaret Sanger, and her advocacy of racial cleansing. Sanger, admittedly, was an unabashed eugenicist who pushed for fewer “undesirable” children. These “undesirables” included poor black children, certain immigrant children, and children with disabilities. She argued for forced sterilization of those she deemed unfit to reproduce.
In her 1919 essay “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” Sanger railed against “the constantly growing stream of the unfit” and called for a stop to “all reproduction when there is not economic means of providing proper care for those who are born in health.”
Sanger identified blacks as “the great problem of the South,” as they were supposedly “the group with ‘the greatest economic, health, and social problems.’” She sought to enlist the help of black pastors and doctors to promote her agenda, warning that “[w]e 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.’”
In 2009, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged the prevalence of eugenics at the time the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, noting widespread “concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
Dr. La Verne Tolbert, founder of Teaching Like Jesus Ministries, spoke of her time as a board member of Planned Parenthood in New York City beginning in 1975: “During the course of my five-year tenure, we received a lot of literature. Most discussed population control and the concern for the growing number of people in the world — poor people.”
Eugenics Today
What some activists do not want to admit is that the odious beliefs of Sanger and her allies remain with us today. They manifest as arguments for low-income women to have greater “access to abortion,” that some women are just not capable of motherhood, and that more births in a particular racial demographic should prompt a “discussion” about their abortion access.
The pro-abortion vision is one of despair and contempt, preferring to abolish life where it is deemed “undesirable” or “inconvenient.” It’s framed as a rational response to an unexpected pregnancy in an undesired population. But who gets to decide who is worthy of procreating and who is worthy of being aborted?
This question is the antithesis of the pro-life stance — that every woman is worthy and every human valued, regardless of race, age, sex, development, or socioeconomic status.
Planned Parenthood Doesn’t Provide Choice or Help
Our clinic staff at Human Coalition receive calls all the time from women who feel unable to parent because they think they can’t economically or emotionally support a child. When our staff listen to these women and provide them with care and support, something shifts — they begin to believe differently in themselves. And we have countless stories of women who chose to have their children because they felt empowered.
One of our clients, Sarah, considered abortion because she didn’t want her child to have a financially unstable mother. After meeting with our staff, she realized she didn’t need to have the approval of everyone else — and chose her child over abortion.
Another client, Annie, had fled an abusive relationship and was thousands of miles from the support of her family. However, she knew she had to choose life after hearing her baby’s heartbeat. “I’m glad I did it,” she texted our team after her daughter was born. “It’s not easy every day but I’m so happy with her.”
It’s obscene that abortion advocates attempt to control entire populations under the guise of helping. Planned Parenthood touts “choice” but never helps women choose affordable housing, child care, or gainful employment — or meets any of their tangible needs.
They’ve never been interested in anything more than widespread, racially disparate human extermination for a fee.