Understanding Black Abortion | Here is What the Numbers Mean

With abortion at the forefront of much of the political conversation today, you’d think that there would be less confusion about what the black abortion numbers are telling us. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Simply put, it seems, the people with the loudest mouths have the least understanding. Or, at least, they pretend to not know what they really mean.

Black Abortion Numbers

Basically, most of the conversations that you hear are centered around choice. In this sense, they assume that “pro-choice” means that one is pro-abortion. Therefore, they label the other side “pro-life”. However, if you stop and think about that it makes no sense. That right there sets the trend for nearly the entire abortion conversation. To be blunt, I think that is by design. Simply put, the goal is to distract from the real issues that are driving decisions or “choice” . In short, it frames the “choice” as a solution while completely overlooking the underlying issues that made the decision necessary in the first place.

As mentioned previously, many people don’t actually understand the numbers involved. That said, they can’t begin to understand the significance of the black abortion numbers. The available data is broken into for racial categories; Black Non-Hispanic, White Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, and Non-Hispanic Other Races. Ultimately, the three key metrics are the abortion percentage, the abortion rate, and the abortion ratio. Next, let’s take a look at them.

2019 Abortion Percentages
Race / Ethnicity	% of all Abortions	Abortion Rate	Abortion Ratio
Black Non-Hispanic	38.4	23.8 abortions per 1000 women	386 abortions per 1000 live births
White Non-Hispanic	33.4	6.6 abortions per 1000 women	117 abortions per 1000 live births
Hispanic	21.0	11.7 abortions per 1000 women	170 abortions per 1000 live births.
Non-Hispanic Other Races	7.2	13 abortions per 1000 women	236 abortions per 1000 live births

Abortion Percentage

Basically, the abortion percentage takes the entire population into consideration. We can break that down to determine what percentage of total abortions were had by a particular race/ethnicity. Essentially, this allows us to immediate disparities in numbers when we consider any particular percentage against a race/ ethnicity’s percentage of the population.

Think about this, Blacks are only around 14 percent of the population of the United States. Even still, blacks led the way in terms of the percentage of overall abortions. Blacks accounted for 38.4 percent of all abortions in the U.S. in 2019. That, in and of itself, should give one pause.

Whites, who are by far the largest part of the population, held the second largest percentages of abortions at 33.4 percent. Hispanics followed at 21 percent. And, lastly, the Non-Hispanic Other Races category had the smallest percentage with 7.2 percent. This last group gives us a hint that is not often spoken of, perhaps culture plays just as big (if not bigger) of a role as race/ethnicity does.

Abortion Rate

The abortion rate is calculated using the number of abortions per every one thousand women. So, for every 1000 black women, there were 23.8 black abortions. As a result, black people lead in abortions according to this metric as well.

As for the other racial categories, something interesting happens here. Whites suddenly move from second place to last place. With Whites, there are only 6.6 abortions per 1000 women. So, here we have the largest population group with the lowest abortion rate. If that doesn’t open your eyes to what is happening, I’m not sure anything will.

In second, was actually the smallest population group. The Non-Hispanic All Others racial category posted an abortion rate of 13 abortions per one thousand women. They were followed by the Hispanic category which had 11.7 abortions per one thousand women. Both of these groups each have around trice the abortion rate as Non-Hispanic Whites.

Abortion Ratio

Similar to the Abortion rate, the abortion ratio is calculate using the number of abortions and one thousand unit measurements. However, instead of measuring based on women, it is measured based on live births. Hence, the abortion ratio is the number of abortions per one thousand live births.

Again, Black Americans lead the way. There were 386 black abortions for every 1000 black live births. Here, we see something that should trouble a rational black mind if nothing else has. The black abortion ration is more than trice as high as the White abortion ratio. The abortion ratio for the White Non-Hispanic White category was 117 abortions per 1000 live births. Once again, Blacks have the highest number and Whites have the lowest.

Also, again, the number two spot is held by those in the Non-Hispanic All Others category. This group had 236 abortions per 1000 live births. And, as before, the Hispanic category posted third place numbers with 170 abortions per 1000 live births.

What the Black Abortion Numbers are Telling Us

The most important thing to note, first and foremost, is that Non-Hispanic Blacks led in the abortion numbers in every single metric. Sadly enough, this include the abortion percentage metric which serves to highlight how skewed the numbers are considering overall population numbers. As mentioned earlier, blacks make up around 14 percent of the population yet accounted for 38.4 percent of the abortions.

We should also pay close attention that the loudest voices saying how blacks would be adversely affected if abortions were limited… are white. The same group promoting abortions as the answer boast the lowest number of abortions in two of the key abortion metrics.

So, what does this tell us? It tells us that perhaps we should rethink the entire abortion debate. We might start with looking at how it is affecting the black population in the United States. And then, maybe, we can shift our focus to the underlying factors that no one seems to want to discuss.