OPINION:
She said the quiet part out loud.
Speaking on behalf of the Biden administration, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week lectured Sen. Tim Scott on the important public value of abortion because it is so frequently used on the unborn children of “teenaged women, particularly low income and often Black.”
This seemed a little diabolical to Mr. Scott, who was born to a single, poor African American mother in South Carolina.
But it is nothing new. Privileged, wealthy White women who are extravagantly educated at Ivy League schools have always been some of the biggest champions of the brutal procedure most commonly used on poor and Black babies.
In the great world of macroeconomics where people like Ms. Yellen rule, it’s not about birth control. It is all about population control.
Welcome to the perfectly distilled vision of the modern American left.
Ms. Yellen was campaigning for abortion while testifying before the Senate in the wake of the leaked Supreme Court ruling suggesting Roe v. Wade may be overturned this summer. Ms. Yellen warned of the economic catastrophe if all those poor and Black babies are allowed to live.
Yes, this from an overeducated, wealthy White woman representing an administration that somehow managed to crash the supply chain that provides baby formula to millions of hungry infants across America.
But, hey, she is the first woman secretary of the Treasury!
Mr. Scott, the unfailingly polite Southern gentleman that he is, observed that Ms. Yellen sounded a little like an inhuman serial killer — though he did not use those exact words.
“To make it sound like it’s just another .4 percent added to our labor force participation as a result of the issue of abortion just to me seems harsh,” he said, with extreme patience and grace.
But the privileged serial killer was just getting started.
“I certainly don’t mean to say what I think the effects are in a manner that’s harsh,” she replied as if speaking to a slow child who had been placed on the front row of her lecture hall because he couldn’t see the chalkboard and forgot his glasses.
Then she went full psycho.
“What we are talking about is whether or not women will have the ability to regulate their reproductive situation in ways that will enable them to plan lives that are fulfilling and satisfying for them,” she said.
In other words: You are a man. Shut up. Butt out of this discussion.
“And one aspect of the satisfying life is being able to feel that you have the financial resources to raise a child, if the children you bring into the world are wanted and that you have the ability to take care of them.”
In other words: I am rich. You grew up poor. You were probably not even wanted as a child. So shut up.
At this point, Ms. Yellen’s halting lecture turned from the plague of unwanted children in America to the effectiveness of abortion on unborn Black babies.
“In many cases abortions are of teenaged women [sic] — particularly low income and often Black — who aren’t in a position to be able to care for children, have unexpected pregnancies and it deprives them of the ability often to continue their education to later participate in the workforce,” she lectured Mr. Scott.
“So there is spillover into labor force participation and it means the children will grow up in poverty and do worse themselves.”
Enthusiastic abortion zealots like Janet Yellen and the abortion industry lobby go to enormous lengths to hide Planned Parenthood’s openly racist vision, as explicitly laid out by its founder, Margaret Sanger.
But those roots are as vile — and vibrant — today as the day Planned Parenthood was founded.
As Mr. Scott attempted to save Ms. Yellen from her own crazed diatribe and reclaim his time in the committee hearing, Ms. Yellen repeatedly interrupted him and lashed out one final time.
“This is not harsh,” she told him. “This is the truth.”
Mr. Scott, the humble son of a single, poor mother who rode the American dream from poverty to the United States Senate in one generation, nodded politely.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I will 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.”
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor of the Washington Times.
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