Anti-Abortion Billboards Targeting Latinos Now

These billboards are about to start appearing in Los Angeles, because targeting the African-American community wasn’t enough for anti-choicers.

The head of the group behind the billboard, the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, told The Daily Caller, “It’s clear that Latinos are being targeted by organizations that promote abortion like Planned Parenthood. Many of their clinics are in Latino neighborhoods and communities.”

The Caller goes on to note, “According to the Center for Disease Control, 22 percent of abortions in performed in America are done on Latinos, making them 2.7 times more likely to abort than non-Hispanic whites.”

Like most anti-abortion rhetoric, this passive construction takes all agency away from the woman — abortions are “done on” Latina women, rather chosen and undertaken. As for the rest of it, it’s either false or misleading. According to Guttmacher, “63 percent of abortion providers are located in predominantly non-Hispanic white neighborhoods, and 12 percent are located in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods.”

According to a separate Guttmacher review of the facts, “Latinas (particularly, those of Mexican origin) have higher pregnancy rates, birthrates and total fertility rates than white and black women; similar patterns are found among teenagers. In recent years, teenage pregnancy rates and birthrates have fallen dramatically for both black and white adolescents, while Latina teenagers have experienced only modest declines in teenage fertility.” The overall unintended pregnancy rate for Latinas is higher; the rate of abortion for Latina women is lower than that of African-American women but higher than that of white women.

Miriam Zoila-Perez writes,

This billboard is bilingual, which means that in the Spanish version of the statement the word madre (mother) appears, and is emphasized. In the English version that attacked African-American women, the word mother, even the word woman, was entirely absent. It was a shocking contrast to the fact that the ads themselves were actually targeting Black women as the ones putting Black children in danger, even though they never actually mentioned them.

With the word madre, it’s ever more explicit that the ones purportedly putting “children” of color in danger are the women themselves.

“The Most Dangerous Place For A Latino Is In The Womb” [Daily Caller]
New Racist Anti-Choice Billboard Campaign To Target Latinas [Feministing]