February is Black History Month, and a time for millions of black Americans to reflect on our history — and our future.

No one can deny that black Americans have come a long way since days of slavery and legal racial segregation in America. Yet black Americans may face a more sinister evil than ever before.

Since 1973, this evil plague has killed twice as many blacks as has heart disease, cancer, accidents, violent crimes and AIDS combined. It kills about 1,450 black infants every day in this country. If this evil goes unchecked and unchallenged, it will annihilate the black community and its hopes for a better future in this country.

What could this unprecedented evil be?

It’s called abortion.

Abortion today stands out as the No. 1 killer in the black community. Think about this: For every black child born, three others are aborted. That’s more than double the rate among white children. In the last 25 years, the abortion industry killed more than 12 million black children.

It all began in 1939 when Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood in this country, created the so-called “Negro Project” to promote birth control among black women. Today Planned Parenthood operates the vast majority of its clinics in predominantly black communities.

Whether intentional or not, the effect of abortion on the black community conforms to Sanger’s vision of birth control among blacks. Since one third of all aborted children are black, the abortion industry has raked in more than $4 billion from the black community. That’s a lot of money made from killing babies.

Researchers view the abortion boom in the black community as a paradox, since most polls indicate that the majority of blacks hold pro-life principles. For instance, the Zogby International poll showed that 62% of blacks said abortion should never be legal. Only 38% of blacks in the poll favored abortion for any reason at any time during pregnancy.

But a number of factors keep blacks from rising up in protest. Black leaders don’t realize the threat that is robbing the black community of its most important resource — its youth.

Only faith can turn the tide. Catholics and Protestants can work together to put an end to this massive infanticide within the black community. The civil rights movement of the 1960s proves this. It started in the black churches as a faith-based movement. Black people of faith across America need to educate their communities in a culture of life. This means promoting a culture that will respect the sanctity and inviolable character of life from conception until natural death.

Dismantling the abortion culture will not be easy, but the words of the old Negro spiritual give us hope: “We shall overcome some day.”

Legionary Father Andrew McNair

is a theology professor at

Mater Ecclesiae College

in Greenville, Rhode Island.