To the Editor:

In response to “Abortion is Greatest Human Rights Abuse of Our Time” which appeared in the Oct. 16-22 issue of North Country This Week: The writer claims that “The abortion industry is rooted in racism and eugenics,” as well as “PP continues to target black children by placing most of its abortion mills in black communities.”

One of the biggest issues of our time is abortion. The contentious fight is also an unresolved one between pro-life and pro-choice. So many males and females, including ourselves, are passionate about this issue.

Sanger's clinics were originally targeted largely at impoverished immigrant mothers, beginning in 1916. Larose notes that "Margaret Sanger launched her “Negro Project” to suppress the birth rate among those she deemed “unfit,” including Black Americans." Touching on that comment in the late 1930s, Sanger began an effort to bring the clinics to the rural south, in what was called “The Negro Project.”

Sanger attracted black activists to help the campaign and advocated that white men who were strangers should not run the clinics in letters to the project's chief. She said that with greater neighborhood participation, considering normal doubts, the project would gain more credibility.

This leads to Larose’s comment “Why then does PP continue to target black children by placing most of its abortion mills in black communities?”. In the article, "Racial Targeting and Population Control," Mark Crutcher uses Census data to assess the African-American and Hispanic population of each zip code where Planned Parenthood has an office. It turns out that there are only about 110 places (out of about 800) where the black population reaches 25 percent of the total population, if you look closely at the numbers. The assertion that most" clinics are in "black neighborhoods" certainly doesn't support that.

Secondly, all abortion providers (about 1,700), including Planned Parenthood, were surveyed by the Guttmacher Institute and found that 60% are in majority-white communities and that less than one in ten abortion providers are based in neighborhoods where more than half of the population are black.

Yet there is ample proof that blacks are more likely than whites to have an abortion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that for black women, the abortion rate is almost four times higher than for white women. The origins of this discrepancy are attributable to the issue of racial and ethnic inequalities through a number of indices of wellbeing, not because planned parenthood today targets communities of color.

Saydie Eggleston

Potsdam