Black U.S. Senator Responds to Treasury Secretary’s Testimony that Abortion Helps Blacks

In one of those impactful educational moments where pro-abortion arguments run into a brick wall of truth, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attempted to convince Senator Tim Scott, R-S.C., who happens to be black, that access to abortion helps poor black women succeed in the labor force.

Big mistake.

It was one of those moments where Yellen might wish she had done some better research on her audience at the Senate Banking Committee on May 10, on which Scott serves as a member.

Yellen made her initial statement about abortion helping the labor force in response to a question from Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.

“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades,” Yellen testified.

When Scott’s turn to question Yellen arrived, he challenged her testimony.

“Did you say that ending the life of a child is good for the labor force participation rate?” Scott asked before reading her previous testimony out loud.

“As a guy who was raised by a single mom, who worked long hours to keep us out of poverty, I think people can disagree on the issue of being pro-life or pro-abortion, but in the end, I think framing it in the context of labor force participation, it just feels callous to me,” Scott said.

“It seems harsh,” he added.

In the give and take that then occurred, Yellen said that abortions in many cases are performed on “teenage women, particularly low-income and often black, who aren’t in a position to care for children … it deprives them of the ability often to continue their education, to later participate in the work force, so there is a spillover into labor force participation.”

Scott’s response was profound – indeed, one of those “mic drop” moments:

“I’ll just simply say that as a guy raised by a black woman in abject poverty, I am thankful to be here as a United States Senator,” he said, and then observed that there are many ways to help women in need other than abortion, including things like child tax credits, better childcare opportunities, early childhood education and financial literacy.

“There’s a lot of ways for us to address the issue about the child that is here. So that, just to me, was unusually piercing comments that you made,” he concluded.

Scott, who has been a frequent guest on the Focus on the Family daily radio broadcast, has served in the U.S. Senate since 2013.

One point that Yellen made is accurate, that abortion does impact the black community.

What she failed to mention, which The Wall Street Journal did for her in an article the same day, is that the impact is harmful. Blacks, as the WSJ reported, are disproportionately harmed by abortion more than whites.

“Why Won’t the Left Talk About Racial Disparities in Abortion?” is the title of the WSJ piece. Its author, Jason L. Riley, pointed to several recent studies, including one from 2020, which noted that the black abortion rate is nearly four times higher than the white rate.

And the article also quotes Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in a 2019 abortion case, where he states, citing a different research paper:

“And there are areas of New York City in which black children are more likely to be aborted than they are to be born alive – and are up to eight times more likely to be aborted than white children in the same area.”

“Some believe that the United States is already experiencing the eugenic effects of abortion,” Thomas added.

In that Supreme Court case, Box v. Planned Parenthood, an amicus brief submitted by several pro-life organizations offered evidence that the abortion industry “targets ethnic minorities.” Planned Parenthood’s founder was Margaret Sanger, a racist who advocated for eugenics. She even gave a speech to a branch of the Ku Klux Klan arguing for the “elimination of the unfit.”

The evidence for Sanger’s connection to racism and eugenics is so persuasive that Planned Parenthood was forced to admit its truth in 2020.

Abortion is an evil that plagues our society and is built on one lie after another. However, claiming that it supposedly “benefits” the black community is perhaps the most deceptive lie of them all.

Photo from Reuters.