According to statistics, Black women have more abortions than whites and Hispanics and the reasons given are that many Black women are poor and are often uneducated about the use of contraceptives and therefore, make poor decisions.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/abortions-racial-gap/380251/
We all know how pregnancies happen. Insert dick inside vagina and voila, here comes baby or maybe not. There are two parties that are inserted into the mix to make a baby and to continuously blame women for finding themselves pregnant all by their lonesome is ludicrous and then to further blame Black women for aborting their babies at a higher rate than white women and Hispanics is just icing on the cake. Black women can do nothing right no matter how hard we try and you know what statisticians, I don’t give a fuck what you say about Black women and why we have abortions because it takes two to tango.
But I digress, first things first. Since we all know that sex is too pleasurable to be denied, unplanned pregnancies are going to occur. There are no sure fire birth control methods other than abstinence, which ain’t gonna happen, and sterilization, otherwise known as tubal ligation or vasectomies. And please, feel free to enlighten me if you’ve had a vasectomy and still managed to impregnate someone, the same with tubal ligation. Now, when I was in school, we were not taught sex education and my mother was like Beaver Cleaver’s mother, ‘the stork delivered us’ was her take on how babies came to be. I knew nothing of how babies came to be until I became of age to attend the prom. I was then handed a pamphlet that explained the process in clinical detail and was told by my mother that there was no way in hell that I would be attending the prom, only to return home, pregnant. I was told that intimacy between a male and a female was so excruciatingly painful, that death was to be wished for more.
My sisters and I were the most sexually repressed females ever to walk this planet, add into the mixture, the hellfire and brimstone that would be rained down on us by ‘god’ and we were afraid to wear skirts for fear of sperm finding its way into our secret garden. Geefuckingwhiz here! We all wore chastity belts, believe me!
How shocked I was when one of my friends came to me asking me where the clinic was so that she could get birth control pills. I mean, how would I know? Maybe they got delivered by the stork or were inside the drug store right next to the Anacin that my mother took, religiously. But somehow, my friend found out and asked me to drive her to the clinic. Unfortunately, her information was wrong and when I got back home, my mother was telling me that my friend had asked me to come and pick her up. The clinic that she wanted to go to was on the other side of town. She informed me the next day that she had gotten her birth control pills and that she was ready for ‘S-E-X’. Of course, I was wide-eyed with wonder and since I had been indoctrinated into the “you are a bad, bad girl if you have dirty thoughts” religion, I had to try and save her soul. So I commenced to letting her have it but she was having none of it. She had heard that sex was a beautiful thing and she had a boyfriend that was eager to get on with it.
My mother did not suspect that this friend of mine was not ignorant like I was to the ways of the world and so; she let me go off with her one day. She had lined up a guy for me. He was a friend of her boyfriend and a seemingly nice enough fella until when we were at the park, he pulled out what I soon found to be a joint and they proceeded to smoke it. I was appalled. I just knew that mother could see all of this and I knew ‘god’ was looking. I demanded to be taken home and I was. Unfortunately, the guy had fallen for me, they always do, and my friend invited me over her boyfriend’s house and there he was. This time, the straw that broke the camel’s back was that they insisted on playing a GASP, sex video. As soon as I saw the first naked body, I screeched and stormed out, demanding to be taken home! The guy sent me flowers the next day. And I remember this quite vividly because I was in my room and my baby sister ran into my room shouting that a florist van was parked in front of the house and mother was telling the delivery man that no one had ordered any flowers. He mentioned my name and the flowers were eventually transferred from his hands into my mother’s. When I came downstairs, my mother was all eyes and shrieking about fallen daughters, blah, blah, blah. The card that was addressed to me read, “Shelby, please accept these roses as my apology for hurting your feelings.” Oh, they were beautiful! Twelve long stemmed red roses and of course, my sisters were giggling and having quite the time witnessing the show.
So, what I am trying to say is that back in my day, many of us were so innocent about sex and had no clue. And even though my friend got herself on the pill, not everyone can or will and the only thing that probably saved me from having a ton of babies was the fact that I had been scared shitless at even the thought of S-E-X. Today, even though we are more aware of what goes on between the two sexes at an early age, it still makes no difference because young people are going to experiment and they are going to make mistakes. We all do. Youth is fleeting as we know and to continuously blame people for something that they really cannot control is ridiculous. I realize that having a baby is a big deal. It is another life that has to be taken care of and the care of that life is expensive and when teenagers are having babies, it is especially hard on the entire family because in many Black households, there is no one home to take care of the baby while the teen mother continues with her schooling. And it is so much easier on the male that had a hand in the conception of the child, but will never show the unmistakable signs of carrying a baby, will not be the one who has to nurture the child from infancy to adulthood, unlike the mother. There are many young men, regardless of color that will not step up to the plate and by them not doing so, it is then incumbent upon the female to make a decision as to what to do about an unplanned for pregnancy.
We must stop shaming and blaming particular ethnic groups for what they do or don’t do. We need to be there for our children and support them when they ‘mess up’ and get into situations, whatever they may be and stop making everything about race when it is all about human nature. We are all fallible and not one of us can lay claim to never having made a mistake in our entire life. This nonsense of what one race does to their detriment over another race is counterproductive and useless in the grand scheme of things. No, people are not as naïve as I once was as well as many others, well, maybe not that many, but be that as it may, abortions for whatever reason are I am sure, hard enough as it is to deal with without making it a Black or a white or a Hispanic issue and point the finger and say, “see, those people are always having abortions because of this, this and that. When will they ever learn?” The question is when will we ALL ever learn about humanity and stop the goddamn judging?
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