Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor—because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them ... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.
ATTRIBUTION:
Angela Davis (b. 1944), U.S. political activist. Address, November 15, 1987. “Facing Our Common Foe,” published in Women, Culture and Politics (1989).
