On Abortion Among Black People

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/us/27race.html

I've been thinking about this article for almost a month now. I don't even know where to start.

Basically anti-abortion people are reaching out into the black community in order get more "inroads with black audiences". They hired a black woman as their minority outreach coordinator. After that, they posted billboards around Atlanta that say "black children are an endangered species" and started a website. They call abortions "womb lynchings". Apparently, since 40% of black pregnancies end in, Planned Parenthood is "preying" on these people.

This might be my conservative side (if that really does exist), but this whole situation is an issue of personal responsibility with black people. Pulling out the victim card and calling it a "conspiracy" is beyond reckless. Nobody told you to have sex. Nobody told you to have unprotected sex that leads to children. Nobody told you to not use birth control (maybe because Planned Parenthood doesn't exist in your area). You made your own personal decision. You have to live with the consequences.

If you end up with an unplanned pregnancy, you're making your own decision on what you want to do. Nobody can force you to have an abortion. Even if someone were to "mislead" you into an abortion, in the end it's your own decision. Maybe your information was flawed, but again, that's your own problem. People know what they're getting into with abortions. It's pretty transparent. Instead of complaining about a conspiracy, maybe these people should advocate for more birth control or just general sex education (since we can't teach that in schools without the right wingers going crazy).

And I'm not one that is saying people should be having abortions left and right. We can reduce the number of abortions by giving people contraception and giving them the education on how to use the correctly. In the end, you would have fewer "womb lynchings" since black women wouldn't have as many unplanned pregnancies. But, aren't condoms an endangerment to the "black species" as well??? Aren't they "killing" black people as well?

On Healthcare Reform & Civil Rights History

A lot is being made about the Democrats plan for health-care reform. One minute it looks like they have their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which means they can push through whatever they want. The next minute, they lose Kennedy's seat, and everyone says healthcare is dead. The next minute, everyone starts talking about reconciliation as a way to only need 51 votes in the Senate to get the bill. Then, you have Republicans calling reconciliation a "back-room deal" even though they used those tactics when GWB was in office.

It's apparent that something needs to change with healthcare. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the bill needs to have this or that. I haven't looked at all the numbers. And most people haven't. So, it annoys me when people cling to their Glenn Becks of the world and just repeat what they say (ex: public option is bad), when they haven't performed the analysis themselves. I'm not saying the public option is good either. I'm saying I DON'T KNOW. Is that such a novel concept?

Now, people are looking at the polls and saying that less than 50% of people are in favor of the health plan. These are the same citizens that hated the stimulus, but loved all the individual tax breaks and incentives that it created.

However, the biggest thing I think about is, who cares about public opinion? Obviously it is an election year and the Democrats are nervous about losing their seats, but sometimes on an issue you have to go above public opinion. Do you think when the Supreme Court made its decision on Brown v. Board of Education that >50% of citizens agreed with it? Hell no. It took 10 YEARS for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to finally become law. Why did it take so long?

By the early 1960s, the nation s congressional history contributed to growing legislative pressures for a comprehensive civil rights law. Although political pressures prevented President John F. Kennedy's administration from proposing legislation to Congress in 1961 and 1962, the President took steps to ensure minority rights in voting, employment, housing, transportation, and education by executive action. (link)

Political pressure = motherfuckers in Congress from the South + public opinion. That means that the public didn't want black people to have their Civil Rights, because if politicians would have voted for it in 1954, then would have lost votes in the subsequent election. It wasn't until the early 1960s that public opinion changed somewhat and allowed the legislation to go through.

The National Opinion Research Center discovered this change of attitude in a sample survey of northern whites in 1963. The Center determined that the number who approved neighborhood integration had risen 30% in twenty years, to 72% in 1963. The proportion favoring school integration had risen even more impressively to 75%. (link)

How does this all tie together? All I'm saying is that someone needs to grow some balls in Congress and pass something that going to rein in costs and create the incentives for lower-cost healthcare. I'm not saying that I know what the solution is, but the alternative (doing nothing) doesn't look too promising either.