Anti-abortion drive targets black people as activists play race card

The message on dozens of billboards across Atlanta is provocative:

black children are an "endangered species".

The adverts featuring a young black child are an effort by the anti-abortion movement to use race to rally support within the black community.

Reaction from black leaders has been mixed but the Too Many Aborted campaign, which so far is unique to only Georgia, is drawing support

from other anti-abortion groups across the country.

"It's ingenious," said the Rev Johnny Hunter, national director of the Life Education and Resource Network, a North Carolina-based anti-abortion group aimed at African-Americans that operates in 27 states. "This campaign is in your face, and nobody can ignore it."

The effort is sponsored by Georgia Right to Life, which also is pushing legislation that aims to ban abortions based on race.

Black women accounted for the majority of abortions in Georgia in 2006, even though blacks make up just a third of the state's population, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nationally, black women were more than three times as likely to get an abortion in 2006 compared with white women, according to the CDC.

Anti-abortion advocates say the procedure has always been linked to race. They claim Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to eradicate minorities by putting birth control clinics in their neighbourhoods, a charge Planned Parenthood denies.