As Live Action News has previously reported, the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) national abortion statistics paint a grim portrait for the Black community. In 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, the percentage of total reported abortions in the United States accounted for by the Black community was 39.2%, up from 38.4% in 2019.
Meanwhile, Black Americans make up 14.2% of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center, and Black women of reproductive age (15-44) compose just 18.1% of the total Black population, or 2.57% of the total U.S. population.
In other words, less than 3% of the nation’s population is responsible for nearly 40% of the nation’s abortions.
Live Action News recently contacted Rev. Walter B. Hoye II to discuss this situation. Hoye’s non-profit organization, the Issues4Life Foundation, “targets and works directly with Black American leaders nationwide to strengthen their Stand Against Abortion.”
The Pro-Life Movement Is a War, and Black America is a Critical Battlefield
Commenting on the disparity in the Black community’s abortion numbers, and speaking about the pro-life movement’s overall failure to address the abortion crisis in the Black community, Hoye commented:
There are times when I’m wondering if we’re really trying to win. There’s some things you have to do if you’re trying to win a war. There’s some battlefields you have to fight whether you want to, or whether you like to, whether it’s gonna be easy–whatever. You have got to deal with it. Got to. And Black America is one of those battlefields.
This is because, as Hoye previously told Live Action News:
As long as a business has customers, it’s gonna stay in business. It can be illegal all day all night, but as long as they’ve got customers, it’s gonna keep going. The abortion industry has customers. And the #1 customers are Black Americans.
So ending abortion in the Black community would effectively decimate the American abortion industry, because, as Hoye points out, “If I took away 40% of your business, it’s over. It’s done. So [ending Black abortion] would help everybody. It should be the number one strategy.”
But in the battle to save Black lives from abortion, Hoye emphasizes that a cookie-cutter approach from the pro-life movement will not succeed. “Every battlefield is unique,” he stated, adding:
So sometimes you need the Air Force, sometimes you need the Army. Sometimes you need the Navy. Sometimes you need the Green Berets. Sometimes you need undercover folk. I mean, you just can’t win a war if you are gonna fight it the same way, no matter what.
As Hoye points out, however, specifically Black pro-life non-profits are scarce, there are few Blacks in leadership positions at other pro-life non-profits, and there are painfully few strategies designed to reach the Black community in the pro-life movement as a whole. And this, among other very serious issues, is leading to a disconnect between his community and the pro-life movement.
And that disconnect has a very real cost in the form of lost human lives.
An Existential Crisis
This is a battle humanity cannot afford to lose. As Hoye has previously noted, the total Black fertility rate stands at 1.7 and is falling, whereas the level required to replace the current population is 2.1. Once the rate falls to about 1.4, a population faces a condition where the decline becomes irreversible – in other words, that population will eventually cease to exist. High abortion rates in the Black community only serve to hasten this process.
“And that’s the point,” Hoye said. He continued:
There’s a man in the Bible. He’s rich, his business is successful, he’s made a ton of money. And he’s talking about retiring, taking it easy, enjoying his fun. And then the Lord says to him, “Tonight your soul shall be required of thee.” He only had till tonight! That night. At that point, it didn’t matter how much money he made. I mean, heaven and hell’s at stake now.
Hoye concluded: “The life issue is the issue.” Because just like the man in the parable, time is running out for the Black community, and existence itself is on the line.
To learn more about Walter Hoye and the work of the Issues4Life Foundation, click here.
