Kerfuffles

Planned Eugenics

From whence came the “progressive” idea that aborting black babies would reduce the crime rate? Of course, from Margaret Sanger’s “Planned Parenthood”, 2004. Go to their website, www.plannedparenthood.org, and click on page 3 of their FAQ sheet titled “Medical and Social Health Benefits Since Abortion Was Made Legal in the U.S.” (pdf)

The legalization of abortion was a significant factor in the dramatic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s.

* Previous research has established that a strong link exists between an adverse family environment and future criminal behavior; that maternal rejection is counted among the various qualitative aspects of parenting that provide the most accurate predictors of juvenile delinquency; and that having been born of a pregnancy that was unwanted by one’s mother is a circumstance that increases a person’s risk of committing violent crime (David, et al., 1988; Donohue & Levitt, 2001).
* At least one study reported that legalized abortion can account for about half the observed decline in crime in the U.S. since 1991. Homicide rates have fallen more than 40 percent, and violent crime and property crime have fallen more than 30 percent.
* The timing of the drop in crime corresponds to the period in which the first generation of children born after the legalization of abortion are reaching what are considered to be the peak ages of criminal activity (18–24 years old). Furthermore, states that legalized abortion before the rest of the nation did so were also the first states to experience decreasing crime rates.
* States with high abortion rates have seen a greater fall in crime since 1985, even after taking into account other factors that would be expected to influence the crime rate. Furthermore, these declines in crime rates in high-abortion states are disproportionately concentrated among those under the age of 25 (Donohue & Levitt, 2001).

Although the majority of women getting abortions are white, “black women are more than 3 times as likely to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are 2.5 times as likely.“

Bill Bennett must have read the Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet. However, Mr. Bennett denounced the idea of aborting black babies as “morally reprehensible.” Planned Parenthood, which knows that black babies are being aborted at a disproportionate rate, has never denounced the idea but explicitly champions abortion as a way of reducing crime rates. Do you suppose that those who attacked Bill Bennett as a racist will say the same about Planned Parenthood? Don’t bet your Jesse Jackson decoder ring on it, nor your NAACP tee shirt.

Ruffles and Flourishes to Marquette Warrior. Linked at ScrappleFace. Check out Planned Parenthood’s promotional video targeting teens of color, “Superhero for Choice“.

In July, “Kerfuffles” was asking “Why Is Judith Miller in Jail?“. Now that the reporter has just been released, “Kerfuffles” asks - what did Judith Miller accomplish by spending almost three months in a Virginia jail? The answer is “Not Much!” The exalted New York Times reporter ultimately made an agreement to testify in court that was quite similar to that of Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper, who did not go to jail.

Howard Kurtz is reporting in today’s WaPo that some of Miller’s co-workers say that much of the New York Times’ staff is frustrated and confused.

“People are angry,” one staffer said. “Was this a charade on her part for martyrdom, or a real principle? She wanted to resurrect herself from the WMD thing,” the staffer said, a reference to Miller stories about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be wrong.

“I am truly depressed,” another staffer said. “It absolutely makes no sense. Basically she did the same thing Matt Cooper did, with the intervening weeks in jail. But I just don’t buy that she’s doing it for her own image enhancement.”

“I am truly depressed,” another staffer said. “It absolutely makes no sense. Basically she did the same thing Matt Cooper did, with the intervening weeks in jail. But I just don’t buy that she’s doing it for her own image enhancement.“

The second question is why do Miller’s fellow journalists exhibit such vicious hostility towards her? Is it because, as Howard Kurtz writes, “some Miller supporters concede that the journalists involved are seen as protecting presidential aides who may have been retaliating against Plame’s husband, a White House critic on the weapons controversy, rather than shielding whistle-blowers who were exposing corruption?”

Kerfuffles’ Commentaries on Judith Miller