Suddenly, it seems, abortion is getting some serious, major and long overdue attention. And it’s coming along different fronts…

Of all the many things people and politicians have against the Senate’s (and Obama’s) version of health care legislation, abortion has risen to the front as a (or the) potential final breach. They’re noticing that even across the pond, as the Economist says “It could all come down to abortion.”

That same paper did a cover story last week titled “Gendercide” which highlighted ’the war on baby girls’. Leaving aside their qualified support of legal abortion, even that newspaper’s editors see the appalling effects of targeted baby deaths in some countries.

China alone stands to have as many unmarried young men—“bare branches”, as they are known—as the entire population of young men in America. In any country rootless young males spell trouble; in Asian societies, where marriage and children are the recognised routes into society, single men are almost like outlaws. Crime rates, bride trafficking, sexual violence, even female suicide rates are all rising and will rise further as the lopsided generations reach their maturity…

It is no exaggeration to call this gendercide. Women are missing in their millions—aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100m; the toll is higher now.

So they set about suggesting changes the world needs to make to prevent such horrific undervaluing of a whole class of human beings.

Why can’t they see the obvious? When we deem an entire class of human beings unworthy of life if their mothers decide against giving birth (or someone forces them to abort), how can anyone make a reasoned and logical argument that some of that class should be more protected?

That’s what some black leaders are asking.

“And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted,”  [Congressman Trent] Franks says. “Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery. And I think, What does it take to get us to wake up?”

A good point, and the right question.

Day Gardner, the president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, says he is right on track.

“Face it America, he’s right. Abortion has exacted a greater toll on blacks than slavery,” she told LifeNews.com.

“Our country brutally enslaved four million people, denying them their rights, their freedom and many times their lives. Rep. Franks is simply comparing that horrific truth to another horrific truth — which is that abortion has killed more than 17 million black people,” Gardner said.

“Slavery is a terrible stain on the fabric of America that can never be fully washed away,” the black pro-life leader continued. “The stain of abortion is every bit as terrible and even more atrocious than slavery in light of the fact that the victims of abortion are totally helpless–they are unable to run away, unable hide or defend themselves.”

Gardner calls the “devastation of abortion in the black community” a “hard truth” and she says “Franks and other members of Congress stand with us to right this terrible wrong.”

Congressman Bart Stupak and his pro-life bloc in the House are doing all they can.