Laura Echevarria

Rep. Trent Franks on Abortion

You know, I get really annoyed when people who have no idea what they are talking about excoriate other people for trying to use a valid analogy to make a point.

Over at Stark Reports, Mike Stark posted an interview yesterday with Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) on health care and in the course of the interview Congressman Franks says the following:

In this country, we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say, “How blind were they? What was the matter with them? I can’t believe, you know, four million slaves. This is incredible.” And we’re right, we’re right. We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul. Yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Far more black children, far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devasted by policies of slavery. And, I think, what does it take to get us to wake up?

Stark, who says he is conservative, calls Franks comment “a real stinker” and over at the “progressive” site Think Progress they say, “But when the conversation turned to abortion, Franks made a clearly indecent comment, claiming that African-Americans were probably better off under slavery…” [italics mine]

Wrong. In fact, quite the contrary, he NEVER says that.

Then, of course, all of the commenters come out over at Think Progress claiming all sorts of things that Franks ought to do or what he is, etc. You get the picture.

What everyone fails to note or realize is the truth of his statement– instead they want to put words in his mouth. (BTW, the transcript of his comments posted over at Think Progress is inaccurate. Franks does NOT say, “How brave they were.” Rather, “How blind they were.” Listen to the You Tube video, ignore the transcript over there.) Franks is NOT saying that blacks were better off as slaves, far from it. What would have clarified his analogy would have been actual numbers so let’s look at some. He is saying that today’s policies make things bad for the African-American community because half of all babies aborted in this country are black. How big is that number? Well, there have been over 50 million abortions in this country since 1973 and there are 1.3 million abortion’s each year. In the last ten years alone, aproximately 6 1/2 million African-American babies have been aborted and African-American women make up only 13.7 percent of the population. Half of all abortions–why is this so skewed?? Franks is saying, rightly, that this is a devasting blow to the African-American community and we need to wake up to it. He’s NOT saying let’s turn back the clock.

Who is doing this to the African-American community? Not the Republican’s, whites, hispanics, George W. Bush or Dick Cheney (or any other “bad guy” perceived as such by the “progressive community”). No, the ones doing this are the pro-abortion Democrats, Planned Parenthood (who made, BTW, over a billion dollars for the first time a few years ago), and groups like NARAL and NOW.

Also, just as a side note, a few years ago, Planned Parenthood described it’s “core clients” as “young women, low-income women and women of color.”

And those are facts.

If you want to learn from the Black community about the devastation abortion causes to the Black community, visit National Black Pro-Life Union.