The High (and Violent) Price of Losing Choice

Every January, my predominantly black neighborhood is inundated by battalions of people from out of town. These folks, virtually 99% white and middle class, come to Washington to protest the Roe vs. Wade decision upholding a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

The protesters seldom spend any real time in Washington, which, they might justifiably conclude, has too much crime and violence. They just pass through on their way to the Supreme Court, where they decry the pain and suffering caused because they lost. However, it is my family and community, not theirs, who have to live with the pain and suffering caused by the fact that in Washington, the anti-abortion supporters have won.

“Forcing a really poor woman to have a child she can’t afford virtually guarantees an increase in crime in her neighborhood,” says Tanya Murphy of the Washington office of the National Black Women’s Health Project. “Welfare payments are never enough to get a child through a month, and women will do whatever it takes to provide for their kids.”

This situation breeds crime all over the United States. But it is particularly acute in Washington, where, as the anti-abortion Family Research Council proudly announced in its publication Washington Watch, “Pro-family members [of Congress] have stopped federal funding of abortion in several areas . . . federal health care plans of government employees including the District of Columbia, and for Medicaid patients (including HMO plans).”

Washington has the nation’s highest percentage of federal employees. Under their health plans, thousands of hard-working women cannot receive abortions or even IUDs. Though they pay for this health-care insurance out of their own salaries, abortions are not paid for, even if they already have more children than they can afford or have health complications.

District citizens have consistently voted pro-choice, yet Congress will not allow local taxes to fund abortions for poor women. Conservative politicians can tout their anti-abortion credentials by forcing their choices on Washington, without the political risk of burdening their own constituents with a dangerous pregnancy or a severely deformed child.

But the most significant way the anti-abortionists have won in Washington is by convincing too many women to choose illegitimacy over abortion, even if it destroys their prospects of a stable family life.

It’s hard to imagine anyone suggesting that a white middle-class girl drop out of high school to go on welfare and have a baby by a man who has been to jail. But, in many parts of Washington, where, according the Sentencing Project, more than 25% of all the young black men have been through the criminal-justice system, hundreds of girls do this every year.

In Washington, 66% of all babies are born to unmarried women. In the two poorest wards, 7 and 8, the figures are 83% and 84%, respectively. One in five births is to a teenager; 49% are to women with inadequate prenatal care. Because many women are anti-abortion, they may opt to have the child, despite the fact that they are on welfare, addicted to drugs or abusing children they already have.

The results: Washington’s homicide rate is at least six times the national average, with an infant mortality rate two to three times higher. The public schools are so poor the local school board was stripped of its authority.

Liberals say it’s unfair to blame all this on too many illegitimate children. However, the anti-abortion activists say a woman should have a baby even though she knows it is condemned to violent streets and terrible schools.

This feeds the black speculation that the real anti-abortion agenda is not to “protect life” but to pressure white women to have more children so they do not become a minority. Murphy doesn’t go that far, but does say, “We certainly know that these anti-abortion laws weren’t passed by African Americans, and aren’t intended to benefit the black community.” She adds, “Black folks make up a large percentage of the people who are personally anti-abortion but who are politically pro-choice because they see what happens to a neighborhood when people have children they can’t feed or supervise.”

The dirty secret of the conservative right is that some of the same groups who have made it hard for poor black women to obtain abortions have also conducted the clearest research on the death, bloodshed and violence that occurs in black neighborhoods when women choose illegitimacy over abortion.

The Heritage Foundation’s senior policy analyst, Patrick Fagan, author of “The Real Root Causes of Violent Crime: The Breakdown of Marriage, Family and Community” writes, “Of all the social indicators, the one which is tied most closely to serious violent crime is illegitimacy.” He continues, “Each 10% increase in single-parent families produces a 17% increase in violent teen crime.” Fagan asserts that 50% of girls who have a baby out of wedlock before age 18 will be long-term welfare recipients.

A similar conclusion was drawn by the conservative theorist William J. Bennett, who co-wrote the book, “Body Count,” documenting the large percentages of young black and Latino men victimizing their neighborhoods, driving out jobs and stable, tax-paying families. Like Fagan, Bennett believes this violence is not caused by racism or economic discrimination, but “moral poverty,” defined by children growing up in an environment without responsible or caring adults. According to Bennett and his co-authors, the results are “super-predators” so remorseless that protecting society requires nearly 100,000 more prison cells to cage these boys when they enter the violent teenage years.

What about adoption? For poor black women in Washington, it’s not a real option. According to Harold Singletary, who counsels abused and neglected children in the District, “Because of religious and cultural biases, less than 10% or 15% of young black women consider adoption. And, if there were enough homes for these children, we would not already have 35,000 abused and neglected children in D.C.’s foster-care system.”

That system has been so mismanaged and overwhelmed, it was forced into receivership. “Conservatives don’t really think it’s important for black children to find caring homes,” say Singletary. “If they did, why are they fighting to stop gays from adopting?”

One person who understands illegitimacy is Leon Dash, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his research on Washington’s underclass. “The most common outcome is the perpetuation of an intergenerational cycle of violence,” Dash explains, “Most young teen mothers constantly slap, push and scream at their children--just like their own mothers did. By the third grade, these kids, particularly the boys, respond to any frustration with physical aggression, becoming a problem for the schools and a threat to the community.”

The real tragedy is that, even when a young women understands how an illegitimate child can threaten her life and her neighbors, the anti-abortionists are insisting that she have the child anyway. Yet, as both the Heritage Foundation and Bennett have proved, by encouraging illegitimacy, anti-abortionists are responsible for much of the violence outside my house.