Former Education Secretary Bennett: Abort black babies to reduce crime

Well so much for civil society. Seems the new approach of Republicans in the US is to flaunt their racist beliefs.

Bill Bennett—a former US education secretary and national drug czar and fulltime right-wing moral crusader who has made millions of dollars from his Book of Virtues and lecturing people on morality, while blowing $8 million in high-stakes gambling—claimed that the crime rate in the USA could be reduced by aborting every black pregnancy in the country.

Bennett made the statement on his morning, drivetime radio talk show, carried on 115 stations across the US on the right-wing Salem Radio Network.

Addressing a caller’s absurd suggestion that lost revenue from aborted pregnancies over the last 30 years would be enough to preserve Social Security, Bennett said:

“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 was discussing the decline in the crime rate—apparently inspired by “the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.” (Media Matters)

Listen the clip from Bennett’s radio show here.

In CNN’s coverage of this story Bennett defends his racist remarks.

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