Race and Abortion: Disconfirmation of the Genocide Hypothesis in a Clinical Analogue

Abstract

This study examined the validity of the proposition that a latent function of liberalized abortion is racial genocide. Using an abortion counseling analogue, forty-two white abortion counselors rendered clinical reactions, including the relative desirability of abortion, to a bogus female patient described as ambivalent about her pregnancy and designated as black or white within a case report. A stronger preference for abortion when the patient was black-identified was not found either among the sample as a whole or among socially traditional and untraditional subgroups.