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Let’s try to make this simple. A thread:
No “race” is morally inferior or superior to any other, in America or anywhere (see Rom. 2:14-15; 3:11-12, 23; Eph. 2:3). Black, brown, and white live with identical consequences of the fall. This is a non-negotiable. 1/
No “race” is morally inferior or superior to any other, in America or anywhere (see Rom. 2:14-15; 3:11-12, 23; Eph. 2:3). Black, brown, and white live with identical consequences of the fall. This is a non-negotiable. 1/
2/ So, why are there statistical disparities when it comes to sins like abortion? Is there more sin in the hearts of one group, defined along “racial” lines, than another? The Scripture closes this door altogether.
3/ (To be clear, all abortion is sin; but the topic is statistical group disparity. We already know that the cause is sin. The question is, why the disparity?) If we actually care, we must look to other, more temporal, more local, more historical, factors.
4/ One such obvious factor is poverty. According to the most recent data, “three-fourths of abortion patients were low income—49% living at less than the federal poverty level, and 26% living at 100–199% of the poverty level” (guttmacher.org/report/charact…).
5/ There are obvious reasons for this. The Brookings Institute notes that rich and poor women have sex at near statistically identical rates, but women in poverty are 5 times as likely to have “unintended” pregnancies.
6/ Two factors are indicated to explain this: first, poorer women are less likely to “intend” pregnancy, for obvious reasons; second, poorer women are less likely to use contraception (access plays are part here as well, of course), the same Brookings study shows.
7/ See: brookings.edu/research/sex-c…. Now, without going through piles of data on overall disparities, we know that black Americans have 1/10th to 1/20th the wealth of white Americans. This disparity is huge, and dwarfs abortion disparities.
8/ The fact of the matter is, the two groups have equal propensity to sexual sin, as per Scriptural principles and sociological data; but economic circumstances have a tremendous impact on the expression, consequences, and outcomes of these identical sinful propensities.
9/ Likewise, there is no reason to believe the two groups are not equally likely to have abortions were their social and economic circumstances the same. The same sins manifest differently under different social and economic circumstances.
10/ That’s just a fact, and should not be confused with more or less propensity to sin. For example, we know that in some communities, quick assess to money might mean a robbery or a drug run. We rightly despise this.
11/ But in a more affluent community, supposed “grey areas” in business practice can take people for millions, but society often considers this, maybe, shady. Often even just shrewd. They may even become president.
12/ The same propensity to sin is instantiated differently in different social and economic circumstances.
13/ And, manifestly, traditional rich white sins of greed and theft undoubtedly lack the stigma of lower class sins of greed and theft, though the former often have significantly more devastating effects.
14/ So, in the end, a better question might be: what has created the vast social and economic disparities along the “color-line”? Do we, maybe, have 400 years of consistent oppressive and discriminatory systems and actions that might help us understand?
15/ Is it possible that a group who was unwillingly imported into the country for the purpose of exploitation, lived under 250 years of slavery, 100 years of legal and de facto Jim Crow, and who continue to suffer under discriminatory policies, institutions, and individual ...
16/ ...biases, might continue to suffer from economic disadvantage just 50 years following the Civil Rights movement?
17/ In short, living with 5 to 10% of the wealth of the historically enfranchised group is a much more obvious, and much more Biblical, explanation for abortion disparities than un-Biblical, racialized assumptions about the moral inferiority of a “race.”
18/18 And even a tepid foray into the history of racialization in America should help put this all in focus.
To conclude, if you are ACTUALLY concerned about the higher rate of abortion in the black community, then it's time to commit to true, full-orbed, James 2:16 ANTIRACISM.
To conclude, if you are ACTUALLY concerned about the higher rate of abortion in the black community, then it's time to commit to true, full-orbed, James 2:16 ANTIRACISM.
