Posted to the web on Wednesday September 28, 2005 at 3:18 PM EST. To listen to the speech click herehttp://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006

Bill Bennett "if you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education ]http://www.bennettmornings.com/]Bill Bennett[/url] dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."


Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book ]http://www.freakonomics.com/]Freakonomics[/url] (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.

From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:

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.

]http://www.srnonline.com/talk/talk-bennett.shtml]Bill Bennett's Morning in America[/url] airs on approximately 115 radio stations with an estimated weekly audience of ]http://www.talkers.com/talkaud.html]1.25 million[/url] listeners.

— A.S.

A reader tip contributed to this article. Thanks, and keep them coming.

Posted to the web on Wednesday September 28, 2005 at 3:18 PM EST

F*CKING DIRTY CRACKER.....excuse my FRENCH.

What kind of foolishness is this man talking and how is he allowed to do it.......? Maybe hismother should have aborted his ass...then we wouldn't have to hear his devilish thoughts.

who the **** is this pale faced prick??????????/

VK,

Black people were in peace until colonists/slaveownerswent to just about every corner of the world taking things and killing people. We didn't create guns, nuclear weapons and other dangerous things that can destroy mankind. Why don't he explain how crack came into our inner cities? No Black man did it. Members of the CIA did it in the 1980's and that was confirmed. I was reading in article from(about three months ago) about how crack is being sent to Africa. Again, I read about who was bringing it on the ships no Black man was mentioned.

sth i will never understand...you can say things like that on American TV but you are not allowed to say the F-word....strange country
i mean there a places in the western world where this man would have been escorted by the army to get out of the studio...damn..do you think you would have dared to say
" if the government wants to get more money,just abort every jewish baby in this country"...what would be the reaction?

I just wonder what black republicans(including some in this forum)will say about Bill Bennett, since he is a conservative republican andco-director of"empower America". I thought conservatives are against abortion. Maybe they are against the abortion of white babies.

CeeCee,

This fool Bennett appears frequently on Fox channel particularly on the Bill O'Reilly "the O' Reilly factor" show. I just wonder why I am not hearing ofany outrage from the black community. Maybe the word is not out yet.

I must be the worlds most naive person cos I cannot believe that in this day and age, people can get away with making these kind of dirty, filthy comments on national TV. Its absolutely atrocious. Especially when you consider the fact that Kanye wests comments were censored from most of america. No justice in the world at all.

That bloated, mutated albino inbred is typical. Typical of what that class truly feel about us.

They talk and think of us a property not people.

We are not enslave like before so to them we are worthless property, junk. So then try to warehouse us in urban nightmares or rural pergatory.

We don't need the love from these people so **** em.
They're recessive anyway.
White America "eats" it's young.

This man was the former Reagan administration Secretary of Education.

His plan was to create an underclass, giving a mandate to discriminate legally.

The troubles we have now were set rolling by men like him in that era.