Rangel’s Re-education
A coincidence?

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NR associate editor.
April 30, 2001 9:15 a.m.

he pro-abortion movement — currently in a self-described state of emergency thanks to the Bush presidency — might soon be calling New York Democrat Rep. Charlie Rangel in to task for voting the wrong way on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act last Thursday.

On Friday, Rangel disavowed his vote. "It was never my intent to vote for this bill,'' Rangel said in a statement. '' Please know that I will continue to defend both a woman's right to choose and the protection of women in our society,'' he said.

Evidently, Rangel, in his 30th year in Congress, is a slow learner when it comes to votes involving the unborn or partially born.

In October 1997, Rangel claimed he made a mistake when he voted in favor of a ban on partial-birth abortion. But the pro-abortion Left must have dispatched him to a re-education camp; by the time the ban came up for another vote, he followed the party line.

Since then, Rangel might have discovered that a disproportionate number of black women, his core constituency, abort their babies — the abortion rate for black women is three times higher than for white women. Perhaps he is more concerned with saving his own political hide than condemning the genocide in his midst.