Abortion II

I can't help but wonder why we're still discussing this, like anyone here is going to change their mind ... yea ... that's gonna happen!

Anon

I can't help but wonder why we're still discussing this, like anyone here is going to change their mind ...

Laws don't have to be changed if people change their minds.

Black churches urged to battle abortion
A higher rate of blacks undergo the procedure than whites, CDC says

BY TAMMIE SMITH
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Mar 11, 2006

Black churches are not doing enough to stop abortion, speakers at a conference said yesterday, some comparing the number of black babies aborted annually to genocide.

"We are no longer the largest minority in this country. That is due, in fact, to abortion," said Day Gardner, national director of Black Americans for Life, an arm of the National Right to Life Committee.

"We have allowed abortion to become a kind of birth control for many of us. . . . Many pastors are afraid they will offend women if they talk about it."

Gardner was among more than two dozen speakers at the 2006 Pro-Life Conference held at Mount Gilead Full Gospel Church in Chesterfield County Friday night and yesterday.

The event drew a multiracial audience of 400 or more people over the two days. Greene Hollowell, a retired contractor and member of Bon Air Baptist Church, organized the event. Hollowell said he and other members of his church minister to women going into abortion clinics and try to get them to change their minds.

"Most of those doing the abortion-clinic ministry were white. Most of the people going in were black," said Hollowell, who said he initiated a partnership with Mount Gilead.

"The only way to stop abortion in Richmond is for pastors and their people to try to change the opinion of the public," Hollowell said.

About 20 organizations, including The Family Foundation, Virginia Society for Human Life and crisis-pregnancy programs, had information booths set up in the church lobby.

Statistically, federal numbers show black women have a higher rate of abortion than whites. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2001 black women across the nation had 29 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. The rate for white women in that age group was 10 per 1,000.

Overall, more white women get abortions, but when factored according to percentage of population, abortion rates are higher for black women. The federal figures do not include all states because several, including California, did not report abortion data in 2001, and some states that reported total figures did not break numbers down by race.

In Virginia in 2004, state Health Department figures show 25,918 abortions. Of that number, whites had 13,000, blacks about 11,000. When factored over numbers in the population, the rate of abortions for whites was 11.3 for every 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. For blacks, it was 31 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44.

Other speakers included Dr. John Seeds, chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology department at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. Seeds said that early in his training he was part of a medical team that treated a woman carrying eight embryos that had been implanted for her to become pregnant. The team reduced the number to two in a process called selective reduction.

"I never did that again," Seeds said. These days, doctors doing in vitro fertilization are less likely to transfer that many embryos.

Seeds said he was bothered by the number of pregnancies that end in abortion. Virginia Department of Health numbers show Virginia women had 101,826 live births in 2004, compared with 25,918 abortions.

"The vast majority are for convenience," Seeds said.

Speakers lauded South Dakota officials for recently enacting a law that outlaws abortion except when a woman's life is in danger. There are no exceptions for rape and incest.

"A child's right to life is not found in the circumstances of their conception," said Kelly Hollowell, author of "Struggling for Life," which looks at taxpayer dollars that indirectly and directly support abortion. She is also Greene Hollowell's daughter-in-law.

Reproductive-rights advocates suggest that the higher rate of abortion in black women can be explained by lack of access to health-care services, including birth-control services.

"There is a real disparity in the health-care system, in who can obtain preventive health-care services," said Mira Signer, director of statewide organizing for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia. She did not attend the conference.

Planned Parenthood clinics provide birth control, annual Pap smears, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and other services at a cost affordable to women who may not have other health-care options, Signer said. Planned Parenthood is committed to keeping abortion available, she said.

There is no black and wite with me, but if forced to ake a divide it would look like:

RU-486 pill - Not an abortion.

First Tri-mester abortion - I still believe in choice at this point. I thik that if ou are going to make the choice, now is the time no other time. Plus idf there is going to be any complication with childbirth that could seriously endanger the mother to be, it can be spotted now. While I don't LIKE abortion, I wouldn't damn someone at this point for making the choice to do so.

Second Tri-mester abortion - Now I side with the Pro life people.

Third tri-mester abortion - I change my mind again and... just kidding. Pro-life again, and annoyed by the bible picketers screeming "murderer at the first tri-mester women.

Basically I don't like abortion, but I cant' argue to make it illegal or remove a woman's right to choose. Honsetly I know a few women who have had to make that choie and it wasn't easy for them. Evangelicals make women like them to be whores and criminals. Not was the case with either women. Both have since went on to birth children and raise their families. I don't think that they did anything wrong.