House GOP Memo Claims Abortion Is Leading Killer In Black Community
Ever since the inmates took over the asylum in 2010 amid an highly volatile sea of fat, white and dumb, they have prided themselves on making the lives of women akin to a Friday evening in Riyadh, the capitol of Suadia Arabia. Flagrantly flouting the Constitution with their severely unstable and misguided religious belief systems, House Republicans have made several legislative attempts to defund Planned Parenthood and are, at present, bitterly fighting against the provision in the Affordable Health Care Act that affords women birth control for free. At the same time any person with a fully functional cerebral cortex simply cannot discuss abortion without mentioning the GOP’s ongoing attempts to pass a “personhood” amendment that immediately outlaw almost all forms of contraceptives available to women including the pill.
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The House GOP, always looking for new and inventive ways to show its utter disregard for women (see breastfeeding at work), has topped itself. Republicans are now exploiting and baiting the African-American community in order to continue their seemingly never-ending hatred of a women’s legal right to choose.
A House GOP memo obtained by Mother Jones argues for a controversial “prenatal discrimination bill“ by referring to “black abortions” as distinct from abortions in general and claiming that “abortion is the leading cause of death in the black community.” It seems the grotesquely inaccurate and seemingly racist memo was circulated by Republicans on the House judiciary committee on Monday in advance of Tuesday’s markup of Rep. Trent Franks’ (R-Ariz.) Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, according to Mother Jones. Congressman Frank’s bill did not make it out of committee when it was brought up in the last Congress; that it is receiving a markup–a key step to getting a House floor vote–during this one suggests that it could very well come to a full House vote ahead of November’s elections. Critics of the legislation naturally feel that it is next to impossible to claim abortions are obtained on the basis of race or gender of the fetus and, worse yet, suggest the provision could lead to a flurry of “nuisance suits” against abortion providers by family members that disapprove abortion on mere principle.
Like most pernicious agendas, the campaign started out innocuous enough. For instance,contentious billboards targeting blacks starting showing up all over the state of Georgia soon after Barack Obama took office. These horrible usages of graphic design often featured a photo of a cute black baby boy looking all despondent (probably because he didn’t want Republicans pretending to give a damn about his race when it suits their radical agenda), emblazoned with the message “”Black children are an endangered species.” One can only wonder if Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) fears that Planned Parenthood will bring their renowned “abortionplexes” to urban centers.
Via Mother Jones:
“The most pernicious part was, they’re trying to hijack the civil rights legacy in the service of conservative causes, trying to appropriate the mantle of the civil rights movement in a really despicable way,” says Loretta Ross, the national coordinator of SisterSong, a reproductive justice organization for women of color in Atlanta.
She also said the cynical effort even featured white people singing “We Shall Overcome” at black women as part of a pro-life “freedom ride” bus tour that stopped at Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Jr. Center. A tasteless and offensive gesture, to say the least.
Similar to the Georgia Bill, backers of Franks’ bill, including Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee, curiously points to an imagined epidemic of black abortions. Naturally, Ross feels that choosing an abortion out of race is ludicrous:
“It’s kind of hard to find evidence that a black woman is going to have an abortion because she’s surprised to find her baby is black. It just strains credulity to think that’s a problem,” [Ross] says with a hearty laugh. “I mean, she wakes up in the morning and says ‘Oh my god! My baby’s black?‘”
Perhaps Ross is new to a Republican thinking so I’ll have to give her a free pass here. Trying to find a lick of sense in anything uttered by today’s inane clown posse in the Republican House and presidential campaign trail is like trying to find a liberal sex shop in Kansas: an exercise in futility.
Jill Lepore of the New Yorker wonderfully expounded upon these transparent fear-mongering and race baiting in her New Yorker essay on Planned Parenthood, saying that “prominent black Americans such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. were supportive of birth control and family planning” and the history of race and abortion in America is more complicated than the GOP memo would lead you to believe. But leave it to today’s radical House Republicans to manipulate an otherwise convoluted issue into an easily digestible taking point, all in order to satisfy their horrendously ugly and myopic agenda.
It should also be noted that AIDS is the leading cause of death for African-American women, according to women’shealth.gov. But if you’re a House Republican, the eradication of a woman’s right to choose is so much more important than the eradication and prevention of a deadly disease.
Michael is a comedian/VO artist/Columnist extraordinaire, who co-wrote an award-nominated comedy, produces a chapter of Laughing Liberally, wrote for NY Times Laugh Lines, guest-blogged for Joe Biden, and writes a column for MSNBC.com affiliated Cagle Media. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook, and like NJ Laughing Liberally Lab. Seriously, follow him or he’ll send you a photo of Rush Limbaugh bending over in a thong.
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Given the Republican party’s history on race relations, from the “southern strategy” of Nixon and Reagan, to the race baiting of Limbaugh and the Tea Party, I submit that if this was remotely true, they would not object. They would be quietly encouraging it.