Clarence Page: Why — and how — we need to talk about racial disparities in abortion rates

Remember the old days when President Bill Clinton brought a temporary calm to the raging abortion debate by declaring the ultra-controversial procedure should be “safe, legal and rare?”

That was in 1992, when compromise still sounded like an achievable goal in Washington. Trend lines already were showing abortion to be in a slow but persistent decline across major demographic groups, although not nearly fast enough to satisfy the politically potent anti-abortion movement.