Colorado Public Radio host Warner failed to challenge Beauprez's claim that “70 percent” of African-American “pregnancies end in abortion”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

On KCFR's Colorado Matters, host Ryan Warner let stand Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez's citation of the false statistic that “as high as 70 percent, maybe even more,” of pregnancies among African-American women end in abortion.

On the August 28 broadcast of Colorado Public Radio affiliate KCFR's Colorado Matters, host Ryan Warner let stand during the interview Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez's citation of the false statistic that “as high as 70 percent, maybe even more,” of pregnancies among African-American women end in abortion.

Beauprez stated that “in some of our ethnic communities we're seeing very, very high percentages of babies, children, pregnancies end in abortion.” When Warner asked him to name “which ethnic communities in particular” he was referring to, Beauprez answered, “I've seen numbers as high as 70 percent, maybe even more, in the African-American community that I think is just appalling.”

In fact, according to the latest figures from the November 2005 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among states in which abortion rates by race were adequately reported, the 2002 “abortion ratio for black women” was “495 per 1,000 live births.” In other words, roughly 33 percent of pregnancies among African-American women that do not end in miscarriages or stillbirths -- less than half of what Beauprez claimed -- end in “legal induced abortions.”

From the August 28 broadcast of KCFR's Colorado Matters:

BEAUPREZ: Tragically, I think, in some of our ethnic communities we're seeing very, very high percentages of babies, children, pregnancies end in abortion. And I think that it's time we have an out-in-the-open discussion about what that means.

WARNER: Do you know which ethnic communities in particular?

BEAUPREZ: I've seen numbers as high as 70 percent, maybe even more, in the African-American community that I think is just appalling. And I'm not saying it's appalling on them; I'm saying it's appalling that something's happening to encourage that. Frankly, it raises another question: Do we think it's OK that that many African-American babies aren't allowed to be born and live an otherwise normal life and reach the blessings, the fullness of the American dream? I think those are very, very serious, very intense, very personal questions that a society such as ours ought to ponder.