Michael Berubé has a very funny piece on the Values Kid. At a press conference today, Berubé reports, Bennett reversed course from his refusal on Friday to apologize for his remarks on how aborting Black babies would reduce crime. (Warning: heavy sarcasm ahead, mixed with fantasy)
Bennett closed his remarks today by asking the American people for a second chance. “One more time, double or nothing,� Bennett pleaded. “I just need one more shot. I’m not ready to cash in my chips just yet, people. Here. Let me tell you how far the crime rate would fall if we aborted babies from Spanish-speaking households. Twenty percent, I’m saying, and you give me a ten percent margin of error either way. Eighteen to twenty-two. Let it roll. All in. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.�
Enjoy.
John McAdams | 05-Oct-05 at 10:44 pm | Permalink
Planned Parenthood Advocates Abortion to Reduce Crime
And the bizarre thing is that Bennett, who explicitly rejects abortion, is under attack.
richard | 06-Oct-05 at 6:00 am | Permalink
Mr. McAdams, you are, as your kind is apt to do, misusing evidence and, in effect, lying.
First, the link you posted is to your own weblog, and the title of that link is a title you wrote yourself. It is not a title that any responsible journalist would use for the material that you’re reporting.
Second, that material does not deal with any Planned Parenthood advocacy of any sort. Rather, it deals with research that shows a correlation between the increased availability of abortion following Roe v. Wade and a steady drop in the nation’s violent crime rate. Note that such a correlation does not necessarily point to a causal relationship between those two events; neither the authors of the study nor the Planned Parenthood news site which reported the study’s results claimed to understand any such causal relationship (Planned Parenthood, btw, was not the only organization reporting on the study; there were hundreds of other reports, on blogs and media news sites.)
Third, with regard to advocacy and abortion, there is a huge difference between suggesting, even as an immediately rejected hypothesis, that one way to reduce the nation’s crime rate is to “abort every black baby”, and Planned Parenthood’s courageous and reasoned advocacy that the decision to abort should not lie with the state but with the individual woman who has become pregnant.
Fourth, I will not lay this on Planned Parenthood, but I will introduce my own advocated position here: the freer we are with regard to the moral choices we make, including the choice to abort a fetus or bear it to term, the more responsible we must be as individuals; and the more individual responsibility we take on, the less crime we will have and the more consistently and assuredly we can prosecute the crimes that are committed. Contrariwise, if we criminalize abortion, we will certainly increase the crime rate dramatically, not only because more unwanted children will be brought into an uncaring world, but because every woman who does insist on her right, as an autonomous moral agent, to choose her own course, will be thereby made into a criminal.
Mr. McAdams, the truly bizarre thing about your post is that you and your fellow true believers have embraced such a racist, addicted, dissembling, self-righteous creep as Bill Bennett as one who needs your protection. Any recovering addict will tell you that what someone like Bennett needs is for those who admire him to reject his defensive excuses and rationalizations and claims that he is being persecuted, and subject him, instead, to the harsh evidence of his harmful behavior and sad life.
Richard