WASHINGTON, Sept 30: The White House on Friday branded ‘not appropriate’ a political ally’s assertion that aborting every black baby in the United States would reduce the national crime rate.

Former education secretary Bill Bennett said on Tuesday 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,” Mr Bennett said during his radio show, ‘Bill Bennett’s Morning in America’.

Asked about the comments, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that President George Bush ‘believes the comments were not appropriate’.

Mr Bennett, who fiercely opposes abortion, served as education secretary under former president Ronald Reagan and anti-drug ‘czar’ under Mr Bush’s father, former president George Bush.

His comments came during a discussion with a caller to his radio show who suggested that abortion had cost the government enough in potential revenues to fund the Social Security retirement program.

In an interview with Fox News Channel on Thursday, Mr Bennett denied being a racist and again said he staunchly opposed abortion, but did not repudiate his apparent suggestion that fewer blacks would mean less crime.

“People need to follow the argument and the argument I was making here is entirely plausible,” he said.

“The causes of crime are very complicated. But there is a very big literature, as you know, about single parenthood in crime, about race in crime, and about poverty in crime,” he said. —AFP