Defending Beauprez's abortion comments, Caplis asked, "is there any difference between 42 percent or 70 percent?"

Summary: Defending Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez's controversial comment that "70 percent" of African-American pregnancies end in abortion, KHOW-AM co-host Dan Caplis said he hoped Beauprez was "not backing off of that position." He then asked him, "is there any difference between 42 percent or 70 percent?"

Defending Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez's controversial comment that "70 percent" of African-American pregnancies end in abortion, on the September 5 broadcast of KHOW-AM's Caplis & Silverman Show, co-host Dan Caplis said he hoped Beauprez was "not backing off of that position." He then asked him, "is there any difference between 42 percent or 70 percent?"

Caplis was referring to a remark, noted by Colorado Media Matters, that Beauprez made during an August 28 interview with Ryan Warner on Colorado Public Radio affiliate KCFR's Colorado Matters. During the broadcast, Beauprez stated that "in some of our ethnic communities we're seeing very, very high percentages of babies, children, pregnancies end in abortion." When Warner asked him to name "which ethnic communities in particular" he was referring to, Beauprez answered, "I've seen numbers as high as 70 percent, maybe even more, in the African-American community that I think is just appalling."

As Colorado Media Matters noted, the 2002 "abortion ratio for black women" was "495 per 1,000 live births," or roughly 33 percent, according to a 2005 publication from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Under pressure from elected officials and women's health care and rights organizations, Beauprez apologized for his remarks one day after Colorado Media Matters reported his comments on August 29.

Referring to Beauprez's inaccurate claim on the September 5 edition of his show, Caplis told Beauprez, "I hope you're not backing off of that position, because this isn't a knock on African-Americans, this is facing a reality -- I mean, I think a one percent abortion rate is appalling. But when you get to those levels, is there any difference between 42 percent or 70 percent?" The "42 percent" figure Caplis uses is an apparent reference to a 2002 Guttmacher Institute report, "Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000-2001," which stated that 43 percent of conceptions among black women ended in abortion. The Guttmacher Institute report based its findings on a "representative sample of more than 10,000 women obtaining abortions from a stratified probability sample of 100 U.S. providers" surveyed in 2000-2001, while the CDC based its figures on "a total of 854,122 legal induced abortions [that] were reported to CDC for 2002."

In response to Caplis' question about abortion rates in the African-American community, Beauprez stated:

I didn't mean in any way, shape, or form that the African-American community is somehow wrong here. I think they ought to be asking the same question we are all asking, what's, what's up with this? And, and, should we be doing better? And if we want a chance for all of our children, as I certainly think we do, we've gotta ask these tough questions and we ought to be able to ask them without creating some sort of a firestorm. I didn't mean for this to be offensive, I meant for it to be challenging, as I think we ought to be always asking the tough questions of our society and our culture.

From the September 5 broadcast of KHOW-AM's Caplis & Silverman Show:

CAPLIS: And while we have you here -- let me go back to an issue last week where you had quoted an inaccurate statistic regarding the abortion rate in the African-American community nationwide -- you put it at 70 percent, it's really 42 percent. And you apologized immediately for using the wrong statistic, but I thought the critical part of your quote was that -- and I forget your word, whether it was abysmal or abhorrent or --

SILVERMAN: Appalling.

CAPLIS: Appalling, thank you. And we had Terrance Carroll on, who is a friend of the show and had been a critic of yours on that, and I got after Terrance, because my point was, whether it's 72 percent or 42 percent, no matter what community it comes out of, it's still appalling. So, you know, I hope you're not backing off of that position, because this isn't a knock on African-Americans, this is facing a reality -- I mean, I think a one percent abortion rate is appalling. But when you get to those levels, is there any difference between 42 percent or 70 percent?

BEAUPREZ: Well, I want to apologize again for inaccurate information, and my apology there very much stands. But the context of the entire discussion, Dan, was that I think it's a huge problem for America the number of abortions we have in total. In our whole culture, regardless of ethnicity, racial groups -- it's an issue I think we have to deal with. And the fact remains that within the African-American community, it is higher than some others, and I think it's an issue that they should be raising, saying, "Hey wait a minute -- there's something out there is taking away the lives of a whole lot of our children that otherwise would be with us, and there's something wrong." I didn't mean in any way, shape, or form to say that the African-American community is somehow wrong here. I think they ought to be asking the same question that we are all asking, what's, what's up with this? And, and, should we be doing better? And if we want a chance for all of our children, as I certainly think we do, we've gotta ask these tough questions and we ought to be able to ask them without creating some sort of a firestorm. I didn't mean for this to be offensive, I meant for it to be challenging, as I think we ought to be always asking the tough questions of our society and our culture.

—C.K.