{"id":229755,"date":"2020-09-01T08:26:25","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T13:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=229755"},"modified":"2020-09-02T13:37:18","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T18:37:18","slug":"researchers-black-children-equal-opportunity-survive-birth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/researchers-black-children-equal-opportunity-survive-birth\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers: ‘Black children do not have an equal opportunity to survive until birth’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Abortion is the hushed killer of Black life that has silenced millions of George Floyds before they even took their first breath of air.”<\/em> This statement was\u00a0written<\/a>\u00a0by one of three researchers who recently\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0a commentary showing a significant racial disparity in United States’ abortion statistics.\u00a0African-American author James Sherley M.D., Ph.D., joined researchers James Studnicki,\u00a0ScD, MPH, MBA and John Fisher, PhD, JD in a stunning\u00a0commentary published<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Journal of Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology. In it, they claimed that abortion denies Black children an equal opportunity to survive until birth.<\/p>\n

The researchers are associated with Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), a research arm of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List. They argued that the “years of potential life lost” due to abortion are substantial, given the\u00a0disproportionately high rates of abortion in the Black community. This, they said, makes abortion “the most demographically consequential occurrence for the minority population.”<\/p>\n

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Charlotte Lozier toll of abortion on Black population (Image: Twitter)<\/p><\/div>\n

“… [M]y colleagues and I show how the racial disparity of abortion is the overwhelming cause of the destruction of Black lives in America,”\u00a0African-American author James Sherley wrote<\/a> in an Op-Ed on their research.\u00a0He claimed that more Black American lives were lost to abortion than the total of many other causes of death.<\/p>\n

“Yet, in this remarkable moment of social reform history, the lives of Black preborn children have been forgotten,” he added.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Planned Parenthood says idea that \u2018abortion is Black genocide\u2019 is offensive\u2026 but there is good reason to believe it<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Years of Potential Life Lost<\/strong><\/p>\n

One way to measure the impact of race-specific abortion rates on the size and demographic composition of the U.S. population is to calculate the YPLL from abortion and to compare its impact to other causes of death. YPLL is calculated by “accumulating all years from the age at death up to 75, for all deaths for each cause of death,” the authors wrote.<\/p>\n

To examine this, the three researchers reviewed 2018 data from the State of Pennsylvania which has high abortion volume and a “very high black abortion rate (37.16)” as well as a “high racial disparity in abortion rates (4.80).” They found that abortions represented 28 times more deaths<\/em> and 36 times as many years of potential life lost<\/em> as Black homicides.<\/p>\n

The authors compared Black maternal mortality to induced abortion and found that the racial disparities “are of the same magnitude and in the same direction, a ratio of about 3-4 times” despite the fact that “maternal mortality, in stark contrast to the high incidence of abortion, is an extraordinarily rare event,” the commentary stated.<\/p>\n

They concluded that there were 1,320 lives killed via abortion for every one maternal death, and there were 1,744\u00a0years of potential life lost to abortion for every year of potential life lost to a maternal death.<\/p>\n

Abortion Data<\/strong><\/p>\n

The authors\u00a0found Black women have for many years obtained abortions at a rate nearly four times that of white women. They reviewed data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) going back to the 1990s and discovered that disproportionately high Black abortion rates have been documented for at least three decades, perhaps longer.\u00a0Yet,\u00a0the authors point out that due to an inconsistency in abortion reporting overall and specifically\u00a0reports of abortions by race, “CDC reports possibly underestimate the size of the racial disparity in abortion nationwide.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“One could reasonably hope, given the pattern of declining abortion rates for three decades, that the racial disparity in abortion also would be decreasing. However, between 2007-2016, the Black rate declined 29% and the White rate declined 33%\u00a0\u2014 meaning that the racial disparity actually increased rather than decreased during that time period,” the authors noted.<\/p>\n

Live Action News previously<\/a>\u00a0estimated that between <\/span>2010<\/a> and <\/span>2016<\/a>, over 1.7 million Black babies lost their lives to abortion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For 2016<\/a>\u00a0alone, Live Action News found<\/a>:<\/p>\n