Pro-choice lawyer who drafted Roe: “Abortion should eliminate the poor”

Ron Weddington, one of the attorneys who drafted the brief for abortion rights in Roe V Wade, wrote a private letter to President-elect Bill Clinton arguing for the state to use abortion as population control. This letter was written in 1992:

“[Y]ou can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I’m not advocating some sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies. In 1989, 27% of all births were to unmarried mothers, a huge percentage of whom were teenagers. If current trends continue, soon a majority of the babies born will be born into poverty and one half of the country cannot support the other half, no matter how good our intentions. I am not proposing that you send federal agents armed with Depo-Provera dart guns to the ghetto. You should use persuasion rather than coercion. You and Hillary are a perfect example. Could either of you have gone to law school and achieved anything close to what you have if you had three or four more children before you were 20? No! You waited until you were established in your 30s to have one child. That is what sensible people do.… It’s time to officially recognize that people are going to have sex and what we need to do as a nation is prevent as much disease and as many poor babies as possible. Condoms alone won’t do it. Depo-Provera, Norplant and the new birth control injection being developed in India are not a complete answer… No, government is going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions… RU-486 and conventional abortions. Even if we make birth control as ubiquitous as sneakers and junk food, there will still be unplanned pregnancies. There have been about 30 million abortions in this country since Roe V Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery… And then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario.”

Ron Weddington is the husband of Sarah Weddington, one of the two lawyers who argued for abortion in Roe Vs. Wade

Quoted in Taylor Carmichael The Seen and the Unseen: Abortion and the Supreme Court (Amazon Digital Services, 2014)

"...there's still that tricky bit about eternal damnation."

Were I a catholic, I could perform the Task, get shriven just before checking out, and sidestep the damnation, even if I have to do a few Eons in Purgatory, (Which, after a Christmas afternoon at my in-laws, would be an uptick.)

Recall what Graham Hill, the F1 champion said about the Afterlife, that he lived as if there is none, and then whatever comes After is sort of a bonus.

Plus, I'm betting I could get any number of Wiki references as a legacy. Perhaps even an entry on IMDB... That's close to immortality.

His solution is one of expediency over personal responsibility - which is basically the left solution to everything.

And in the vast majority of cases that approach simply doesn’t work. For example he states that in 1989 27% of all births were to unmarried mothers. Today after two and a half decades of unrestricted abortion AND birth control the number is 40.7%.

In 1965, before Roe v Wade, 24 percent of black infants and 3.1 percent of white infants were born to single mothers - less than 6% overall. By 1990 the rates had risen to 64 percent for black infants, 18 percent for whites. Today it is higher still.

So wouldn’t a better solution to single motherhood be to go back to what existed prior to 1965? And what existed prior to ‘65? Sex outside marriage was considered taboo and society and all it’s institutions placed a heavy stigma on pregnancy out of wedlock especially for teenage girls. And for the guy, he would be looking at a shotgun wedding. In other words there were serious consequences imposed not so much by laws but by the civic society - culture and customs.

Those consequences are long gone. They’ve been replaced by free child care at your local high school, heroic fables of single motherhood, welfare and child support. As for social stigma - foggetaboutit. Today single motherhood is a heroic act paraded all day long on all the TV shows.

All this is the result of the misguided and fault assumption that he makes...

“It’s time to officially recognize that people are going to have sex and what we need to do as a nation is prevent as much disease and as many poor babies as possible.”

The problem isn’t the sex, it’s whether people take and are made to take personal responsibility for the result of that sex. Civic society can play a huge role in minimizing irresponsible sex by imposing heavy consequences (stigmas, no financial support, etc., even ostracizing) as was done prior to the 60s’

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/1996/08/childrenfamilies-akerlof

The equivalent of that assumption today would be “It’s time to recognize that kids are going to rob convenience stores and break into house, so let them do it and let society reimburse the losses to the owners.”

Coming to think about it, we’re not far from that scenario.

> That’s my quote.

Oh, okay. It's not normal practice to put your own comments in quotation marks, as though you were quoting someone else.

> You haven’t heard that lots of people believe Chelsea is Webb’s daughter?

Oh, I see it on FR all the time. Elsewhere, not so much. It seems to be a mainly FR meme, which is fine, in the tradition of the stuned beeber and the moose-cheese-sister triad. And I agree that Chelsea looks one hell of a lot more like Webb than Bubba. It's a little uncanny.

But I have to guess that Bubba was poking Hillary for at least a while back then. He'd poke anything this side of a knothole. So one can never be sure.

Marriage used to be defined around raising a family, getting into a contract with another family for important business continuation etc... Now, it is all about sex sex sex, sex addict sex

Hence things like gay marriage now are legitimate.

Yes, sex is important for valuation, but it is a byproduct of this valuation. It is life, liberty and then pursuit of happiness once we have the other two, as Allan Keyes explained.

I feel better now...

Interesting stats. I was aware of the white birth shortage, and sadly was a participant in our procreating years. I did not have appreciation for what I had done until some article shook me awake a couple years ago. I wanted to have a family of 4 or 5 children while Mrs. BCC was satisfied with our son. I should have insisted on more children, but it’s water under the bridge, as we’re old now.

It’s not the only problem we as a society have that I was a contributor to. If I knew then what I know now...

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