Senate votes to criminalize ‘coerced abortions’

What, exactly, is a “coerced abortion?” Well, according to a conspiracy theory-cum-marketing campaign bankrolled by the anti-abortion Georgia Right to Life, it’s when a black woman is duped into ending her pregnancy by evil forces that want to exterminate minorities.

That may sound far-fetched, but GRTL has poured more than $20,000 into plastering Atlanta’s neighborhoods with billboards claiming “Black children are an endangered species,” and directing them to a website, www.toomanyaborted.com, that lays out the “dark legacy” of race-based eugenics in America, as practiced by such nefarious groups as Planned Parenthood.

In fact, the website has a whole dog-and-pony show devoted to Margaret Sanger, the birth-control advocate who founded the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood. The site uses a number of 70- and 80-year-old excerpts from Sanger’s voluminous speeches and writings — which use un-PC terminology typical of the era — to suggest that she advocated abortion in the cause of racial purity.