Natural Unborn Killers

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Natural Unborn Killers
The bigotry of Bill Bennett's low expectations.
By William Saletan
Posted Monday, Oct. 3, 2005, at 11:22 PM PT

Is it morally acceptable to predict the criminal propensity of unborn children based on the color of their skin?

That's what former education secretary and drug czar Bill Bennett did last Wednesday on his radio show. When a caller suggested that legal abortions had depleted the tax base for Social Security, Bennett counseled against such utilitarian arguments. "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," Bennett volunteered. "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."