Principled Perspectives: AP: 'Minority women most affected if abortion is banned, limited' . . . Really?

Friday, February 25, 2022

AP: 'Minority women most affected if abortion is banned, limited' . . . Really?

The Associated Press reported that Minority women [are] most affected if abortion is banned, limited.

Now, on the face of it, this is absurd. Any woman who desires an abortion is being denied her right to control the reproductive functions of her own body. So, what could the AP possibly mean? Emily Wagster Pettus and Leah Willingham explain that minority women—i.e., darker-complexioned women—account for a disproportionately large number of abortions.

The numbers are unambiguous. In Mississippi, people of color comprise 44% of the population but 80% of women receiving abortions, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health statistics.

In Texas, they’re 59% of the population and 74% of those receiving abortions. The numbers in Alabama are 35% and 70%. In Louisiana, minorities represent 42% of the population, according to the state Health Department, and about 72% of those receiving abortions.

So, based on these statistics, minority women are most affected. But real people are not statistics. It makes no difference to a woman whose right to get an abortion is violated where she fits into some statistical study. Skin color is irrelevant to any woman who must be forced to carry a pregnancy to birth, for whatever reason. The authors state that darker-complexioned women, on average, are less likely than lighter-complexioned women to be able to afford the sometimes long, expensive trip to a state where abortion is legal. That’s a problem. But it’s no less a problem for a light-complexioned woman who is not well off, either. They’re both affected in that same way. Again, statistics are irrelevant to any economically restricted woman. Both their rights are violated. Both face the same economic hardship, imposed by the state.

What’s missing from angles like this article is any concern for real live individuals. To claim that a non-minority woman is any less of a victim of these anti-abortion laws because non-minority women as a group proportionately account for fewer abortions than minority women as a group is to say that her rights are less important than some minority woman, which violates the principle of the moral equality of all individuals.

But it gets worse:

“Abortion restrictions are racist,” said Cathy Torres, a 25-year-old organizing manager with Frontera Fund, a Texas organization that helps women pay for abortions. “They directly impact people of color, Black, brown, Indigenous people ... people who are trying to make ends meet.”

They directly impact all women. It does not matter to any woman who is “trying to make ends meet” what percentage of “white” or colored people who can afford the extra expense. These laws directly impact individuals in different economic ways, to be sure. But it has nothing to do with skin color. Two women, one black and one “white”, who are in the same economic circumstances, are impacted the same. And in the all-important matter of individual rights, all women are equally affected.

Collectivism is increasingly corrupting American culture, media, and politics. Forgotten is the individual. It is individuals who have lives and values and goals and sovereignty . . . and rights.

Regardless of what legislators say, Torres insisted, the intent is to target women of color, to control their bodies: “They know who these restrictions are going to affect. They know that, but they don’t care.”

Possible racist motivations of the people behind these anti-abortion laws notwithstanding—and it’s a stretch, to say the least, to find racism here—the fundamental political issue of abortion is a moral one—the rights of the indiviidual. The conflict is not one of skin complexion. The motivation of the anti-abortion side is primarily religious and/or moral, not racial, and it crosses racial lines.

In typical Woke fashion, Torres provides no evidence for racism or racist intent. Statistical disparities prove nothing. In typical “Anti-racism” Woke fashion, she displays her own racism. Who, after all, is prioritizing or devaluing individual victims of anti-abortion laws based on skin complexion? Her whole worldview is race-oriented. Granted, anti-abortion forces also channel racism in support of their cause. Some, both white and black, including Alveda King, a niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Tanya Britton, liken the legalization of abortion to “black genocide”, as the article later points out. But two wrongs don’t make a right. Torres provides more evidence of the racism of the Anti-racists, than of racism of those supporting the Texas abortion restrictions.

Racism, like climate change, is one of those knee-jerk go-to “explanations” for any problem. These are tactics that are employed by people who have run out of ideas. Why won’t Torres confront the issue squarely, rather than fall back on such a hollow, vacuous “race card” argument? Perhaps, like the anti-abortion forces, it is because she doesn’t believe in individual rights. Perhaps calling forth individual rights to defend abortion rights could, and does, challenge her other political beliefs. She opposes the 1980 Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds being used to pay for most abortions. But such funding violates the individual rights of taxpayers to spend their money as they see fit according to their own values and morals. Why should a person who opposes abortion, or even supports abortion rights, be forced to pay for someone else’s abortion? That both sides ignore individual rights does not justify either side’s minimizing, or outright ignoring, individual rights in the abortion debate. And it certainly doesn’t justify “playing the race card,” which is an indication of intellectual bankruptcy.

Collectivist framing of issues is biased reporting in the worst way. That’s what Emily Wagster Pettus and Leah Willingham, and the Associated Press, are guilty of in this article. Statistics are fine as information. But they are not fundamental. They are not definitive proof. When statistics are used to collectivize an issue, the result is moral corruption. In the end, any approach to any issue that puts the group, rather than the individual, at the center of concern is morally flawed, and thus socially, culturally, economically, and politically flawed. When the individual and her rights are ignored, the ultimate victim is justice. That is the danger in how this article is framed.

* [Not the right to get it at someone else’s expense, but a right to get one at her own expense or through some voluntary means, such as charity. A right is a guarantee to freedom of action, not an automatic claim to services or goods that others must be forced to pay.]

Principled Perspectives

Friday, February 25, 2022

AP: 'Minority women most affected if abortion is banned, limited' . . . Really?

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