William Bennett's Comments On Abortion

William Bennett has come back into the news in a big way since yesterday. Bennett has always been an extreme conservative, so much so that I think Attilla The Hun would quiver near him.

That's why I was surprised to read the first headlines of his new controversy. The headlines and lead paragraph of the story only related the dismal sounding portion of his on air conversation, which was that abortion, specifically abortion among blacks has lead to a reduced crime rate.

WB went on to say that he supposed that if you aborted every black baby, crime would go down. He went on to call that "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, if all you read is the first sentence above, it looks pretty horrible, if you read the whole paragraph it looks bad, but not nearly as crazy. However, if you put it all into the context of answering a callers question on someone else's assertation that the abortion rate among blacks has lead to a reduced crime rate, it looks like he was have a conversation of extrapolation on a theory.

Of course the last part doesn't matter, since the news is only concentrating on the part of his comments that sound like he endorses the idea. The fact is when you read everything he said, he didn't endorse it, he condemned it!