You can become a "reborn virgin." Black women and abortion in MS.

[Maddy McCall]

Daisy Anderson, 17, held her 4-month-old baby on her lap at a Jackson(Mississippi) crisis pregnancy center while listening to a lecture about the best way to avoid getting pregnant: don't have sex.

Four teens - three pregnant and one cradling her newborn - sat around her on couches and chairs at the Women's Resource Center, an organization that targets black women.

"You can become a reborn virgin,'" said the instructor, Hallie Duckworth, who is helping set up a Madison home for teen mothers. "I believe God covers every sin we have."

Concerned about the disproportionate number of African-American women who undergo abortions, the founders of the Women's Resource Center launched the organization in 2004 to reach out to young, mostly black, pregnant women. By promoting abstinence and supporting women through pregnancy and early motherhood, the center hopes to avert future unintended pregnancies.

snip/

Anti-abortion activists such as Day Gardner, national director of the Washington, D.C.-based Black Americans for Life, believe the African-American abortion rate is so high because many abortion providers are located in inner cities with large concentrations of blacks.

"When you are frustrated or realize you're pregnant with another child people want you to believe there's no other option but to abort your child," Gardner said.

Kayla Forbes, a 17-year-old black mother of a 4-month-old baby boy, said she called an abortion clinic when she learned she was pregnant but never followed through because her mother forbid her.

"The longer I waited I just had to accept it," the Jackson 11th-grader said.



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