By Sarah Terzo
Pro-abortion author Rosalind Pollack Petchesky writes about how poor minority women are sometimes pressured to have abortions [1]:
Especially in locales with large concentrations of poor blacks, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, Chicanos, and Native Americans, a more serious problem regarding abortion may stem, not from its denial, but from its forced imposition.…
They [minority women who became pregnant] report that poor women of color may find that a positive pregnancy test automatically results in an aggressive attempt to persuade them to undergo abortion. Instead of being offered a choice, they are presumed to be too poor or too young or to have too many children already to bear a child.
This is in part a function of the population control mentality, but it also reflects economic interests. In profit-making abortion establishments, Medicaid reimbursement and unregulated fee schedules operate as an incentive to some doctors to process as many abortion cases as possible.
[1] Rosalind Pollack Petchesky Abortion and Woman’s Choice: The State, Sexuality & Reproductive Freedom (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990) 161