When a caller to his radio show argued that outlawing abortion would help Social Security by increasing the number of people paying into the system, Bill Bennett warned that such an argument evaded the question. Abortion should be opposed on the grounds that it is ethically inexcusable, not in the hope of shoring up Social Security. Bennett then attempted to show the caller the error of his thinking by presenting a hypothetical argument in favor of legalized abortion. Bennett proposed that it could be argued that the abortion of every black baby would reduce the country’s crime rate, an argument Bennett went on to call “ridiculous and morally reprehensible.”

That there is a problem of crime in the African American community is undeniable; after all, African Americans comprise 40% of our prison population but only 12% of our country’s population. Still, this glaring and endemic problem in the African American community does not justify the objectionable remarks of Mr. Bennett. By singling out black babies in his hypothetical argument that legalized abortion reduces the crime rate, Bennett fostered the false impression that African Americans are more prone to criminality than other Americans. Such an incongruous intimation is simply not the case.

The Bible teaches that we are all sinners—red and yellow, black and white. Therefore, race has nothing to do with our propensity to sin. Regardless of skin color, all men are equally prone to sin and universally in need of a Savior. “Why then,” you may ask, “is the crime rate higher in the African American community?” I believe the answer to this critical question of our time is twofold.

First, the crime rate among African Americans is higher because the causes of crime are exasperated in the African American community. The causes of crime are the same everywhere. Wherever these causes are exasperated the crime rate soars. For instance, one of the chief causes of crime is the breakdown of the home. In today’s African American community 70% of all babies are born to unwed mothers. This frightening statistic translates into single-parent homes without male breadwinners and into children growing up without fathers or male supervision. Consequently, the African American community is plagued with the twin scourges of poverty and crime; neither of which, however, is to be attributed to race.

Second, these exasperated causes of crime in the African American community are seldom acknowledged, much less addressed. Instead, they are all whitewashed (pardon the pun) and blamed on our nation’s past sins of slavery and civil rights abuses. Anyone refusing to toe this politically correct line will be mercilessly vilified as a racist. Thus, in the end, the exasperated causes of crime in today’s African American community are actually insulated by political correctness and proliferated by men’s refusal to acknowledge and address them.

Although Bill Bennett’s ill-advised remarks were intended to condemn all abortions, his insensitive “hypothetical analogy” of aborting black babies to reduce the country’s crime rate has left him susceptible to the charge of racism. Rather than being seen as a zealous opponent of abortion, which Bennett has always been, he is now being accused of advocating the abortion of all black babies. The irony in all of this is found in the fact that Bennett’s accusers are, for the most part, the real advocates of abortion in America—Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, and civil rights leaders like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton.

It is estimated that 10 million black babies have been aborted since the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973. This translates into a 35% reduction in the population of today’s African American community. With 1,452 black babies being aborted daily in America, with abortions in some African American communities now outnumbering births 3-to-1, and with 43% of all black pregnancies in America today ending in abortion, there appears to be no end in sight to the dwindling of our country’s black population.

No organization in America has championed abortion rights more than Planned Parenthood. What few people know, however, is that Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist who advocated abortion for the purpose of reducing the black population. According to Sanger, “Negroes” were “mentally inferior” and “a menace to the [human] race.” Thus, she advocated abortion as a way to reduce the black population. As the above statistics on abortion in the African American community prove, Margaret Sanger’s diabolical plot appears to be coming to pass right before our very eyes.

It is imperative for its future survival that the African American community stops looking for its enemies through the narrow prism provided it by today’s politically correct crowd. If it fails to do so, and continues to block its peripheral vision with politically correct blinders, the African American community will never see the real enemies that surround it. Although it will continue to be haunted by ghosts from the past, such as slavery and segregation, it will never see the present horrors of illegitimacy and crime. Although it will continue to revel in the rhetoric of civil rights leaders who lay the blame for all of its problems at the feet of others, its problems will remain unsolved and only worsen as it continues to renounce all preachers of personal responsibility as racists. And although it will continue to feel threatened by every foolish remark made by a radio talk show host, it will fail to see the danger to itself posed by Planned Parenthood clinics in inner-city neighborhoods.