By contrast, the national antiabortion movement has largely ignored minority communities. Its energy, funds and volunteers come mostly from "white, suburban, small-town, red-state America," said the Rev. John Ensor, who runs Heartbeat's Urban Initiative.
That legacy has sown indifference and mistrust.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday March 25, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 57 words Type of Material: Correction
Antiabortion efforts: An article in Wednesday's Section A about antiabortion efforts in black communities oversimplified the eugenics views of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger in saying she did not support coerced birth control. Sanger did not support measures to limit the population of minorities through coerced contraception. She did, however, support forced sterilization of the mentally disabled.
"When you go to African American communities -- even myself, an African American woman -- you'll find they don't trust pro-life people," said Lillie Epps, a vice president of Care Net, which runs more than 1,000 suburban crisis pregnancy centers. "They look at us as a group who cares very little about what's going on in the inner city, the poverty and all the other issues."
In the last three years, Care Net has opened 19 urban antiabortion outposts -- in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Indianapolis -- and Epps hopes to set up centers soon in Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla. "But it's been very tough," Epps said.
"I'm just being honest with you. When they hear 'pro-life,' the first thing they think is 'white Republican.' "
Certainly, that was LaToya Yarbrough's perception when she became pregnant six months after her first child was born out of wedlock.
Yarbrough, 28, had seen the ads promising help for crisis pregnancies, but those clinics were a long bus ride away, out in the suburbs. Plus, that was a white woman's world, she thought; how could they understand?
"I had this view ... that I'd be saying, 'I can't afford this, I can't afford that' and I'd be looking at [the counselor] and thinking, '\o7You\f7 can, because you probably have a husband at home who's a doctor or a lawyer,' " she said.
So Yarbrough started dialing abortion clinics. At one, a secretary sensed her despair and referred her to the Family Care Pregnancy Center, run by a black megachurch in south Dallas.
There, amid stacks of baby formula and booties, Yarbrough met other black women as afraid as she was -- and black counselors determined to help them find a way to carry their pregnancies to term. She took free classes in prenatal care, child discipline, car-seat safety, spiritual growth. She picked out baby clothes from a closet of donated rompers. The center's director, Jettie Johnson, recognized that Yarbrough was still suffering postpartum depression from the birth of her first son, Byron, and provided counseling.
Yarbrough's second son, Joshua, will turn 1 in May.
