Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe tweeted on Sunday that “white supremacists oppose abortion” because they fear it will “reduce the number of white infants” and eventually contribute to “non-white replacement.” The professor ignores the disproportionate effect of abortion on black Americans and the fact that actual white supremacists like Richard Spencer endorse abortion.
This weekend Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe insisted on social media that white supremacy and abortion have a direct correlation, claiming that racist white people are against abortion due to fearing it will “reduce the number of white infants and thus contribute to what they fear as non-white ‘replacement.'”
The professor’s claims, however, are peculiar, given that abortion has had a disproportionate effect on minority communities. According to a 2018 report, induced abortion is the leading cause of death in the United States, and accounts for 61 percent of all deaths amongst black Americans. Rev. Clenard Childress Jr. notes that 52 percent percent of all black pregnancies end in abortion as well.
“White Supremacists oppose abortion because they fear it’ll reduce the number of white infants and thus contribute to what they fear as non-white ‘replacement,'” tweeted Tribe on Sunday. “Never underestimate the way these issues and agendas are linked. This turns ‘intersectionality’ on its head.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) — among many other users on Twitter — reacted to Tribe’s claims by pointing out that abortion actually kills more minorities than whites.
“My old con law prof, sadly, being deeply deceptive,” began Cruz in his tweet. “Abortion targets in particular minority women. More than 1/2 of African-American babies, tragically, are aborted. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a vehement advocate of eugenics.”
Despite facing significant backlash on Twitter, professor Tribe has since doubled down on his initial remarks, stating he did not mean to say that everyone who is against abortion is a White Supremacist. “Learn to read, folks!” tweeted Tribe. “I neither said nor implied nor believe any such thing. Some X are Y doesn’t translate to all Y are X. Duh.”
But Senator Cruz’s point, however, carries a lot of weight, given that avowed white nationalists — such as Richard Spencer for example, who was recently seen on CNN criticizing President Donald Trump — have also acknowledged their own opposition to the pro-life movement. In accordance with Margaret Sanger, Spencer takes a pro-abortion stance for eugenics purposes.
“The people who are having abortions are generally very often black or Hispanic,” Spencer previously stated. “We want to be eugenic in the deepest sense of the word. Pro-lifers want to be radically dysgenic, egalitarian, multi-racial human rights thumpers — and they’re not us.”
The Centers for Disease Control found that between 2007 and 2010, more than 35 percent of the deaths by abortion in the United States happened to black babies, despite blacks representing only 12.8 percent of the population. On the contrary, non-Hispanic whites — who make up 63.7 percent of the U.S. population — account for only 37.7 percent of all U.S. abortions.
Rapper and TV personality Nick Cannon has also expressed his thoughts on Planned Parenthood, stating that the abortion provider is promoting “population control,” as well as committing “genocide” against black people.
“Think about all the stuff they did with Planned Parenthood,” said Cannon in 2016, “that type of stuff is to take our community and — forget gentrification — it’s real genocide, and it’s been like that for years.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.