The eruption of raw emotions must be risked if we are to reduce the staggering death that accompanies the acceptance and practice of abortion today, both in the broader population and in the ethnic and racial subcultures that acquiesce for tragic, but not irreversible, reasons in a practice violative of their heritage and core convictions. Dr. Glenn C. Loury, an African-American professor of economics at Boston University, has emphasized the importance of religious belief in providing symbolic language that, in turn, contributes to the formulation of public policy. He notes that a religious horizon motivates the pro-life movement. Karl Marx said with impatient sarcasm that the philosophers merely interpreted the world, whereas the point is to change it. While a wide consensus exists on the need to change the dominant patterns of abortion in minority communities, little consensus on causes and conditions accompanies the abortion data.
Interpretations tend to generate far more heat than light.
Perhaps because of the volatile state of race relations today, any interpretation of abortion is minutely examined for traces of unspoken racial premises, leading many to change the topic in awkward haste. Enter here not a further interpretation but a personal disclaimer for the benefit of readers who want to know an author's experience of the topic covered. My religious community, the Josephites, has served for more than a century in the United States as agents of evangelization in, and in behalf of, the black community. The culture of death knows not the color line, but the color line is on intimate terms with the culture of death. First, racial stereotyping has a long and rancid history of polluting race relations.