That racial prejudice might be a factor in contemporary white American’s opposition to abortion didn’t occur to me until I came across Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon’s Unplanned— a film based on the life of Abby Johnson, who quit her job at Planned Parenthood after witnessing, through an ultrasound, the supposedly gory abortion of a 13-week-old fetus.

In the film, Johnson is depicted as having assisted doctors with abortions for multiple patients, all of whom are white. It isn’t until Johnson encounters her first black patient that, after two years in the industry, she decides enough is enough. According to Johnson, of course, this had nothing to do with the woman’s race and everything to do with having had to use an ultrasound to facilitate the abortion and seeing the fetus “fight for its life” (which is ridiculous because fetuses don’t possess the capacity for consciousness necessary to recognize that their “life” is at stake, let alone fight for it).

But here’s where her story gets interesting. On the day Johnson quit her job, the day she claims to have witnessed this gruesome, life-changing abortion, the only black woman listed on the Induced Abortion Report Form was six weeks along, not thirteen. Additionally, none of the abortions performed that day would have required the use of the ultrasound.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Johnson has maintained the veracity of her story, arguing that Planned Parenthood doctored the Induced Abortion Report Form in some larger conspiracy against her. To me, it seems more likely that she simply fabricated her story — or, at least, embellished a true one. But in some ways, whether it’s true doesn’t matter because, if it is, it’s still significant that Johnson found a black woman’s abortion so disturbing she quit her job after two years of aiding the procedure. And if it’s false, it’s even more significant because it represents something so deeply ingrained in the consciousness of white pro-lifers that she selected it as a detail to include in her phony narrative.

Now, I understand that racism being implicit in the pro-life lobby, especially as evidenced by characters in a film production, will be a tough pill for folks on the right to swallow. I’m sure, among other things, they’re thinking, “What’s racist about believing life begins at conception?” But to diminish our political realities to mere policy disputes oversimplifies the complicated ways in which identity politics actively shape our political thinking.

What, for instance, is racist about being against the Affordable Care Act? Ideally, nothing, except that researchers at Brown discovered public opinion on health care reform is polarized much more by racial attitudes when framed as an initiative by Barack Obama than by Bill Clinton (both Democratic presidents). I imagine, though, that those against Obamacare likely defend their position with economic or other sociopolitical reasoning, despite research indicating that, subconsciously, racial resentment is at play.

Public opinion on welfare, as another example, shouldn’t be racially informed either. Policy disagreements about Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), and housing subsidies should be largely economical. And, yet, research shows that whites tend to support welfare programs only when they know it will support other whites. In another study, when whites were exposed to images of people of color, particularly African-Americans, as the recipients of welfare, their support of those programs plummeted.

While abortion isn’t a form of welfare, it is the government allowing people of color to improve their economic fortunes — and, historically, white people haven’t approved of that.

Based on the variety of available evidence, it seems safe to say that racial resentment may be lurking beneath our otherwise purely intellectual policy disputes on a number of issues. And given the aforementioned history of the pro-life movement, in addition to the data on abortions (particularly, who receives them), it wouldn’t surprise me to know that racial resentment is at play here, too.

While abortion may not be a form of financial assistance, being unable to afford a child is the number one reason women cite for seeking it. Additionally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black women are five times more likely and Hispanic women are more than twice as likely to get an abortion as white women. So although they’ll say it’s not a racial issue, whites pro-lifers seem to abhor a policy used primarily by blacks and Hispanics to significantly mitigate financial disaster. While abortion isn’t a form of welfare, it is the government allowing people of color to improve their economic fortunes — and, historically, white people haven’t approved of that.

To be clear, none of this is to say that every pro-life individual is fueled by racial resentment. Similarly, opposition to the Affordable Care Act or an increased welfare state may be held by plenty of folks who aren’t racially motivated. Nevertheless, the research is clear. We shouldn’t indict pro-lifers on an individual level (even 38% of blacks believe abortion should be illegal in all/most cases), but we should be rightly suspicious of the pro-life lobby as an organized political entity, especially one with racist origins that remains dominated by white leaders.