Inconvenient Truth: Many Black Southern Democrats Vote With Their Conscience and Support Abortion Bans

The great Salena Zito has a piece in the Saturday edition of the New York Post in which she presents information that breaks fairly dramatically with pro-abortion activists battling anti-abortion legislation in Southern states.

Many black Southern Democrats actually support fetal heartbeat and other anti-abortion legislation, Zito writes. Pro-life Southern Democrats aren’t exclusively African-American, however.

Kentucky state Rep. John Sims is a Democrat. He also voted for the state’s recent heartbeat bill, which bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected.

In a country where Democrats are viewed as overwhelmingly pro-choice, Sims seems like an oddity.

…

Sims doesn’t see himself as strange.

“It is not unusual at all in my book to be both a Democrat and pro-life; it’s just the way I was raised in the church,” said Sims from the back of the Dairy Queen his family has owned for 66 years.

Life means life “from conception until death,” he said.

But many of those who live in the South and break from the Progressive norm on the abortion issue are black Americans. Zito draws a distinction between the vast majority of Democrats — particularly California Democrats who have organized boycotts of the film industry in Georgia over their fetal heartbeat bill, for example — and Southern Democrats who, she says “aren’t as clear cut on the issue.”

Citing a Pew poll, she notes that several Southern states have a large percentage of voters who consider themselves pro-life, often well above the national average.

“And here’s a fact that might surprise people north of the Mason-Dixon Line — 58 percent of the pro-life Democrats in Louisiana are black,” Zito writes. “In Mississippi, that number jumps to 73 percent. ‘The point is … Democrats who call themselves pro-life … in most states are black,’ said [Republican pollster Wes] Anderson.”

In trying to answer why black Southern Democrats break with their Northern compatriots, Zito gives the mic to Louisiana State Rep. Katrina Jackson, who spoke at the 2019 March For Life rally in Washington, DC.

“There are two reasons you see pro-life Democrats in the South,” she said. “The primary reason is we are guided by our faith — the Bible teaches us it is wrong. Also, we are really family oriented. It’s not unusual to see us on a Sunday with three generations of families and extended families sitting around the dinner table…We network to make sure our children are taken care of. That’s something for us that’s never been labeled pro-life, it’s just the way we live.”

It’s also a fair bet many black voters in the South are beginning to listen to prominent black Americans such as Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley when he writes that, in some cities like New York, more black babies are aborted than born. It’s reasonable to believe Southern voters don’t want to import those statistics.

Which means the Alyssa Milanos and Reese Witherspoons of the world — who have been vocally declaring their intent to fight for the women in these states — have their work cut out for them. Because it doesn’t sound like their help is needed or even desired.

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