The Liberal Bennett-And-Switch

So here come the liberals to save us poh' black folk again. Another golden opportunity to out a closet Republican racist. But if I may be so bold, these libs need be very careful on where they wish to go with this. They may have some 'splainin' to do....

It all started with this exchange on the September 28th broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's "Morning in America": Pardon me if I provide "context"....

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.

BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?

CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.

BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.

CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.

BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --

CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Now while I would have more carefully chosen my words (and race example, depending on who and what I am), Bennett's point is logical. Obviously, if you were to abort poor black males, black crime would go down just as if you were to abort poor white males, crime in poor white neighborhoods would go down.

To say that Bennett advocated the abortion of black males, as alleged, is absurd, as are the responses by the usual liberal mouthpieces....

Bennett's comments, flagged by the liberal news media watchdog group Media Matters for America, were quickly condemned by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who issued a statement demanding that Bennett apologize. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) circulated a letter, signed by 10 of his colleagues, demanding that the Salem Radio Network suspend Bennett's show.

Wade Henderson, the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, demanded that the show be canceled.

"Bennett's statement is outrageous. As a former secretary of education, he should know better," Henderson said. "His program should be pulled from the air."

• Brian Faler, Washington Post, Friday, September 30, 2005

It's well known that Bill Bennett, being a Christian conservative, is pro-life. Thereby, as he said during the radio show exchange, aborting anyone let alone blacks for the sake of lowering crime, would be an “impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do.”

I personally don't believe Bennett is this closet racist. The art of talk radio is to be able to say the most in the least amount of time. The more controversial, the better, but the main goal of any talk show host is to make people think. And he is not the only person to have ever come out with this hypothesis. Wade Henderson should know better.

So let's talk abortion in the black community shall we...?

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Since 1973, more than twice as many blacks have died from abortion than from heart disease, cancer, accidents, violent crimes and AIDS combined; blacks make up about 12 percent of the population in the U.S. but account for 32 percent of the abortions; and about 1,450 black infants are aborted every day in this country.”

Clenard Childress, Jr., director of the Northeast Chapter of the Life Education and Resource Network, said, “For every five African-American women who get pregnant, three have an abortion.”

In 1939, Planned Parenthood Federation (PPFA) founder Margaret Sanger had this great idea. Aside from keeping the Aryan race as pure as the driven snow, she felt that poor blacks contributed nothing to society and abortion may just be a good way of curbing poverty. Thus she created “The Negro Project.”

An editorial in the March 2005 edition of “The Defender” quite eloquently explains the “Project” and how it affects blacks today.

“An advocate of eugenics, the science of improving races through control of hereditary factors, Ms. Sanger identified the “need for birth control among the underprivileged Negroes” as a primary factor in raising the economic status of the race. To this end, she was supported by many leaders in the Black community who sought to cleanse the gene pool of the “unfit.”

In the 1930s, Ms. Sanger’s “Negro Project” offered through contraception, a solution to the problem of too many children born into low-income, undereducated families (or to single mothers) who could not be expected to contribute very much to the betterment of society, but more likely would increase the levels of crime and poverty. Like other impoverished and overwhelmed women of their time, Black women bought into it.

As the 20th Century progressed, Planned Parenthood grew in strength and political power. It gained respectability among the elite who sought to control the reproduction of the poor. Financed by endowment and by taxes, it systematically placed its facilities in the poor, Black communities. There, as they dispensed contraceptives, these facilities waited while PPFA lobbyists sought to overthrow state and federal laws prohibiting abortion. In 1973, Roe vs. Wade opened the doors to the American Holocaust, and Planned Parenthood was ready.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, research arm of PPFA, “94 percent of all abortion providers are located in metropolitan areas, which generally have high black populations.” (BlackGenocide.org) PPFA does not provide a comprehensive list of its abortion clinics; however, the locations of 160 PPFA abortion facilities have been identified by the website of Stop Planned Parenthood (STOPP) Int’l., a subdivision of the American Life League. In 62.5 percent of the comparisons, communities with a PPFA clinic had a higher percentage of blacks than the state as a whole. In Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts and Ohio, communities with PPFA clinics all had much higher black populations than their respective states. Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming, all with low black populations, have none of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinics. Strong pro-life forces in two states with high black populations, Louisiana and Mississippi, have been successful in keeping out PPFA abortion clinics.

A factor equal in importance to “black genocide” in Planned Parenthood’s targeting of Black communities is money. The abortion business is lucrative. Childress states, “If it was not lucrative, it would not be legal. Since about one-third of all abortions are performed on black women, the abortion industry has received over four billion dollars from the African-American community.”

Just as easy access to legal abortion has not solved the problem of poverty in the Black community, neither have its proponents recognized, much less tried to mitigate, any of the risks to women who undergo elective abortion or to their future children. Among these are cerebral palsy, pre-term birth, and the disputed link to breast cancer, an issue which refuses to go away.

At least 17 studies have found that a previous induced abortion increases the risk for pre-term birth often resulting in Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW), a risk factor in cerebral palsy (CP) and other birth defects as well as in infant mortality. From a 1991 CP-VLBW meta-analysis: “If one assumes the incidence of cerebral palsy in the general population to be 2/1000 live births. . .then the relative risk for cerebral palsy among surviving VLBW infants would be 38 times that in the general population.” For the children of African-American women who have undergone 14 million abortions since 1973, these risks are proportionately higher than those of their white counterparts.

In recent polls, 54 percent of all Americans declared themselves pro-life; 44 percent support legalized abortion; however, 59 percent of Black Americans took a pro-life stance with only 42 percent in support of abortion.

Dr. Alveda King, daughter of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., took part in the national March for Life in Washington, D.C. on January 24. “I’m post-abortive so I know this, when we abort the child, we violate his or her rights, we as the mothers suffer tremendously, and our families suffer,” King said. “If the Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to live, our babies must live.”

Black leader in her community and at-large board director for the National Right to Life Committee, Michelle Jackson, writes for the Culture of Life Foundation: “Advocates of abortion told us in the 1970s that legalized abortion would dramatically reduce poverty and extend the rights of women. Twenty-five years later and with 12 million children dead, half of Black America is still poor and Americans devalue motherhood, especially black motherhood. Enough is enough.”

Jesse Jackson is an advocate of Planned Parenthood. Bill Bennett is not.

If one was to say that Bill Bennett believed crime could and should be reduced by abortion, then one could also argue that liberals who support abortion believe in and advocate black genocide.

Do they really want to go there...?

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