The Brooklyn Ink, a publication from the Columbia Journalism School, published a piece yesterday that looks at the sky-high abortion rate in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, where more than half of pregnancies are terminated.
Included in the article was a quote from Edna Johnson, who serves on the local community board and who doubles as a longtime aide to Congressman Ed Towns, and who argued that more people in the neighborhood should in fact be having abortions:
A Bed-Stuy community board official, however, said the ratio was not excessive.
“If the abortion rate is high, that’s because it should be high, because it needs to be high,” said Edna Johnson, chair of Community Board 3’s Health and Hospital Committee.
“These kids need to be in school, not on the streets trying to feed a child,” she said, referring to Bedford-Stuyvesant’s large number of poor, uneducated, and sexually active young people.
Abortion is obviously a big issue in Republican circles, but the high abortion rate in the African-American community has been known to concern some black leaders as well.
Mr. Towns is facing the most serious electoral challenge of his long career next year as popular Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries lays the groundwork for a potential campaign against him.
We have reached out to Mr. Towns’ office for comment and will update when we receive one.
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