More than 63 million unborn children have been killed since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, and many of those children were black. The Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), a Christian nonprofit focused on black issues, recently released a wide-ranging policy brief examining abortion in black America.

The report, titled "The Impact of Abortion on the Black Community," detailed "the physical, legal, cultural, and economic harm abortion has caused to our nation – including the black community."

The authors, Star Parker, Marty Dannenfelser, and Raheem Williams, sketch a brief history of abortion in the United States, highlighting the eugenic motivations of early abortion supporters, such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. They suggest that legal abortion is rooted in racism, drawing a line between postbellum laws "requir[ing] blacks to be able to read and write to be eligible to vote" and legal abortion, which, they argue, may have prevented the births of "black senators and representatives in the halls of Congress" and barred black Americans "from gaining greater political power."

As the authors note, black women are significantly more likely to procure abortions than their white and Hispanic counterparts. According to the report, "black women made up 14 percent of the childbearing population in 2020, yet obtained 39.2 percent of reported abortions." The authors claim that gap is driven in part by the concentration of abortuaries in black population centers, citing a Life Issues Institute study that found each of Planned Parenthoods "25 new abortion mega centers" in 2017 were built "within walking distance of minority neighborhoods." They argue that the accessibility of abortion in black neighborhoods is "a major contributor to the rate at which black women obtain abortions."

Now that the Supreme Court in Dobbs has overturned Roe, and legislators can once again restrict abortion access at the state level, the authors call on pro-life advocates to "redouble [their] efforts to persuade officials at all levels of government to investigate the abortion industry and redirect funds away from Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers."

"The Impact of Abortion on the Black Community" is the latest publication from CURE, a decades-old group that recently partnered with the Claremont Institute on The State of Black America essay collection.