For some perspective, an online search turned up

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For some perspective, an online search turned up a 2008 Guttmacher Policy Review article by Susan A. Cohen, a vice president for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that promotes reproductive health and abortion rights.


Cohen, saying the national abortion rate for black women is almost five times the rate for white women, suggested this is greatly explained by higher incidences of unintended pregnancy among African American residents.

Higher rates, Cohen wrote, "reflect the particular difficulties that many women in minority communities face in accessing high-quality contraceptive services and in using their chosen method of birth control consistently and effectively over long periods of time.

Moreover, these realities must be seen in a larger context in which significant racial and ethnic disparities persist for a wide range of health outcomes, from diabetes to heart disease to breast and cervical cancer to sexually transmitted infections (STI), including HIV."

In examining the socioeconomic factors behind this phenomena, Cohen disputed the idea that black women are recruited into having more abortions, a sentiment that has been shared by anti-abortion activists and conservative politicians. These issues were also extensively explored last September by Zoe Dutton in a piece for The Atlantic called "Abortion’s Racial Gap."

GOP leaders have used these statistics to argue against abortion, positing that it disproportionately affects black communities. In August, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson articulated this stance in relation to Planned Parenthood, claiming during an appearance on Fox News that the organization has contributed to abortion being "the number one cause of death for black people."

The leading causes of death for black Americans are actually heart disease, cancer and stroke, according to the CDC, but Carson’s rhetoric speaks to the GOP’s broader stance against abortion.

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