So in this story, a worldview with racist antecedents wins a major policy victory that immediately has a disproportionate effect on minority birthrates. And then there is the further twist that over the longer run, Roe v. Wade and the sexual revolution probably changed family structure as well, as George Akerlof and (future Fed chair) Janet Yellen argued in a 1996 paper, by creating a wider space for men to expect sex without commitment and to behave irresponsibly toward pregnant woman: “By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother,” they wrote, “the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father.”

Like the abortion rate itself, this trend — the long rise of fatherlessness — has been steeper in poor and vulnerable communities. So it, too, has helped to sustain racial inequality, by reserving to the whiter upper classes the socioeconomic advantages that two-parent families enjoy.

Keep following this logic, and you might conclude that if Planned Parenthood really took anti-racism seriously it would repent of its support for abortion, and devote itself exclusively to helping support African-American pregnancies instead.