links for 2011-07-18

By On July 18, 2011 · 7 Comments
  • Behind Closed Doors: Abortion In The African-American Community | NPR (AUDIO)
    I know what some of you are going to say, so let me say it for you: it's two men arguing for and against abortion. Dissect at will.–AJP "At one point in the conversation, Bomberger asks 'how is that the same people that can find these clinics to have an abortion can't find the same clinics for contraception?' He says it's because Planned Parenthood doesn't tell the women about other clinics that don't offer abortion services.

    "Veazey says women should be able to 'determine when or whether to have children according to her own conscious and religious beliefs without governmental interference.' Women, he says, 'are moral agents' on the issue."

    (tags: via:andreaplaid blacks abortion debate)
  • Update from Pelican Bay Hunger Strike: Strikers Reject CDCR Proposal | VivirLatino
    "When reading below, I hope people will check back with the demands of those on strike. The conditions inside Pelican Bay and other California prisons are conditions that were they happening in a prison overseas – there would be a different outcry – a different level of support. But given the racial and class politics inside of the US, most assume this torturous treatment is acceptable or deserved. An 'assessment' is what government entities always offer up in the face of protest y dissent. It is what the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Customs Enforcement have offered up in the face of questions regarding how Secure Communities is being rolled out. To offer an 'assessment' is to deny what the community is witnessing and EXPERIENCING as truth."
    (tags: via:andreaplaid california prisonrights incarceration race racism)
  • Maryland Robo-call Case Going to Court | Washington Post
    "With the polls still open on Election Day, a woman’s recorded voice told tens of thousands of blacks who picked up the phone to 'relax' and not to worry about going to vote because O’Malley (D), the incumbent governor, had already been 'successful' in his rematch against Ehrlich. Henson has hired a lawyer, Edward Smith Jr., who shares his client’s panache for the provocative. Smith said the calls were a far cry from notorious attempts to restrict the rights of blacks after the Civil War and before the civil rights movement of the 1960s."
    (tags: via:carleandriacook maryland election politicalcampaigns race lawsuit)
  • Fighting School Violence, Asian Immigrants Find Their Voice | New American Media
    "'This is not just a one-way street,' says Grimes, 19. 'It’s just that no one [in our community] went out to the media and spoke to anyone.' Grimes points out that tensions have dramatically reduced now compared to 2009. She says it is frustrating that so many of the school’s accomplishments have been overshadowed by the media’s overplayed tensions between African-American and Asian students.

    "But the Asian activists believe there is still work to be done to overcome the inherent distrust between African-American and Asian groups. 'We have more security than guidance counselors,' Tong says. '[School officials are] asking them not to fight, not to be criminals, but [at the same time] are treating them like criminals.'”

    (tags: via:carleandriacook philadelphia asian asianamerican blacks youthofcolor studentsofcolour schools)
 
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  • Anonymous

    “He says it’s because Planned Parenthood doesn’t tell the women about other clinics that don’t offer abortion services.”

    Is that even true?

    The only conversation on this topic worth having is one that centers around improving access to decent education and health care, minimizing poverty, and helping people find jobs.  Any discussion about black people and abortion that doesn’t talk about those basic things that make it feasible for women to even afford to keep their kids to begin with is a big fucking waste of time for everyone, and is probably run by some politically calculating, cynical, sanctimonious, reactionary, racist cretins, anyway. 

  • Cc

    @golby260:disqus
    , one of the most interesting parts of the conversation to me was the observation that the Latino community is 37% uninsured vs. the Black community being 19% uninsured and Latinos have a similar rate of poverty yet the Black abortion rate is still higher.  So this suggests that edu, health care, poverty, and jobs don’t explain the discrepancy.
     
    I really recommend listening to the debate before assuming the motives of the debaters.

  • Cc

    @golby260:disqus
    , one of the most interesting parts of the conversation to me was the observation that the Latino community is 37% uninsured vs. the Black community being 19% uninsured and Latinos have a similar rate of poverty yet the Black abortion rate is still higher.  So this suggests that edu, health care, poverty, and jobs don’t explain the discrepancy.
     
    I really recommend listening to the debate before assuming the motives of the debaters.

  • Anonymous

    But isn’t the Latino population more Catholic and have more kids overall?  Don’t they have less single mothers and fatherless children?  I get by on assuming on this topic because I’m rarely wrong.  I know that’s not a thing anyone should say on this blog, but I don’t feel like concern trolling black women by mostly white pro-lifers is in any way a genuinely morally concerned movement anyone should take seriously or debate honestly with, because I highly doubt that the anti-abortion activists are doing this for any other reason than to dupe black voters into becoming more pro-life and more Republican.

    If there’s a transcript to find, I’ll read it.  Don’t feel like “listening” to a stupid, pointless debate.  (Yes, I’m biased — don’t care.)

  • Anonymous

    I finally found the transcript, and I’ve read it all.  It’s here, for anyone willing to read:

    http://www.npr.org/2011/07/18/138473348/debate-boils-over-african-americans-abortions

    I’m wondering where Mr. Bomberger gets his statistic about Hispanics versus Black women from, because he didn’t really cite his info.  Am I to assume it’s from the same place the other statistics concerning this debate have come from?

    In any case, I don’t see a “high” abortion rate as a “problem,” at least not in the ways the self-purported moralizers want to make it.  I don’t see it as a good or a bad thing — I see it as an ultimately unimportant factoid in the larger scheme of things.  It’s like female feticide in India.  You could freak about it, and go on about how evil and horrible it is, and it is demonstrably bad, because we can see the results in the living population — there are far less girls than boys in many parts of India and the rest of eastern Asia.  The thing is, though, there, as it is here in the States, the solutions aren’t to demonize abortion, make it illegal, or to demonize or patronize those who get them.

    People like Mr. Bomberger, who believe abortion is a great evil, well, I’m wondering what he feels about others on his side who believe that abortion isn’t medically necessary for any reason.  I wonder what he feels about women in Ecuador dying because their doctors were too afraid to risk the law raining down on them like fire and brimstone to abort deadly ectopic pregnancies.  I wonder what he feels about teenage girls who are raped and who are forced to beg judges to let them get abortions even when they are wards of the state or in jail and no one has any business expecting them to effectively raise a child.  I wonder what he feels about little girls also in South America being told to carry their fetuses to term by their Church, while their rapist walks off scot-free.  I wonder what he has to say about that nun who was excommunicated from that Catholic hospital in Arizona for essentially saving a woman’s life, a woman who was going to die if she had brought her child to term.  I wonder what he says also about children growing up in poverty with incompetent guardians who guilted themselves into “keeping their kids.”  I wonder what he also has to say about single women in South Korea being pressured by their families and the government to give up their babies so that foreigners will adopt them, particularly when the women want to keep them.

    (and LOL at the references to slavery!  It’s like they got nothing else…!)

    I can support people who want to change the culture, make people respect one another and children more, but I can’t support making abortion illegal — that’s the extremist crackpot’s position.  I don’t support women being made to feel guilty, told to regret their choices in life, or be slut-shamed.  I also don’t support making abortions hard to get.  All that will do is make it harder in the future for women to get abortions for medical reasons (since many assume that these women will want them to “avoid responsibility”) and it’ll have abstinent people like me, if I ever get pregnant and have a miscarriage, to prove to some court that I really did have a miscarriage and it wasn’t induced, or else, I’ll be facing jail time like that teenager in Mississippi.  I’m also not interested in dying a preventable death because my doctor will be afraid of going to prison.  Pro-lifers and whatever legitimacy their movement has had has let it get hijacked by extremist crackpots who are also apologists for terrorism, telling by how many excuses were made for the killer of Dr. Tiller in Kansas.  I don’t trust them to have good intentions in mind, or else, they’d do a better job of repudiating the fundamentalists among them.  They either don’t want to, or they won’t even bother, because they have a very big platform, far bigger than the Muslims who are accused of not doing enough all the time, so I have no reason to trust them or assume good faith on any new talking point or position that they purport to stand for.

  • Cc

    I’m curious about this -

    you say female feticide is demonstrably bad because of the phenomenon of missing girls – so why isn’t black feticide demonstrably bad because of the resulting missing blacks?

    You say -  I’m wondering what he feels about others on his side who
    believe that abortion isn’t medically necessary for any reason. 

    Who would these others be?

    Could you cite your sources on Ecuador and South America, please?

    Could you cite a case where a teen victim was denied an abortion by a judge – or where a judge tried to deny such an abortion?

    Do you know that most pro-life leaders/organizations are on record in agreeing with abortion with a mother’s life is in danger – that they were on the nun’s side?

    As for how Ryan feel about kids in poverty or with neglectful parents – he’s gone out of his way to help kids in poverty.  He’s written a lot about that. 

    I’m also wondering how Ryan is responsible for South Korean women being pressured into adoption – when the women you’re talking about want to keep their kids anyways.

    You LOL with the slavery reference – do you have a specific prob w/it?  I think Ryan had a lot of other points – hence the transcript.

    You say- I don’t support women being made to feel guilty, told to regret their choices in life, or be slut-shamed.

    Where’s that in the transcript?

    You say- All that will do is make it harder in the future for women to get
    abortions for medical reasons (since many assume that these women will
    want them to “avoid responsibility”) and it’ll have abstinent people
    like me, if I ever get pregnant and have a miscarriage, to prove to some
    court that I really did have a miscarriage and it wasn’t induced, or
    else, I’ll be facing jail time like that teenager in Mississippi.

    None of those things happened pre-Row v. Wade nor do they happen in Western industrialized countries where abortion is illegal.

    There have been men who have committed violence against women for NOT getting abortion – has the pro-choice movement been hi-jacked by them?

  • Cc

    Actually, the movement in question is a black led movement.  Republican doesn’t equal pro-life anymore than Democractic equals pro-choice.