If only Bill Bennett had been aborted

....then I wouldn't have to write this post and waste my energy. Most people have heard about what Bill Bennett, former education secretary under Reagan, recently said on his radio show, if you haven't here is the transcript, courtesty of Media Matters. CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all. BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens? CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue. BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No. CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah. BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well -- CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate. BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But 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. 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. Bennett was obviously making a reference to Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Levitt, the economist who was one of the authors of the study about abortion takes Bennett to task point by point, on his blog here. The highlight of his point by point response to Bennett was this bit: "7) There is one thing I would take Bennett to task for: first saying that he doesn't believe our abortion-crime hypothesis but then revealing that he does believe it with his comments about black babies. You can't have it both ways."(emphasis added) Bill Bennett should make sure he reads the studies that he cites the next time he decides to pretend to be educated on an issue.