House Speaker Newt Gingrich is blaming the "welfare state" and the moral failure of America's leaders for the slaying of a pregnant woman and two of her children near Chicago and the removal of the baby from her uterus.
"It happened in America because for two generations, we haven't had the guts to talk about right and wrong," Gingrich, R-Ga., said in a speech Tuesday to Republican governors meeting in New Hampshire."We end up with the final culmination of a drug-addicted underclass with no sense of humanity, no sense of civilization and no sense of the rules of life in which human beings respect each other."
Gingrich said the slayings of Debra Evans, 28, her 10-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son were "not an isolated incident."
"Let's talk about what the welfare state has created," Gingrich said, holding up a newspaper account of the killings. "Let's talk about the moral decay of the world the left is defending."
Friends have said Evans attended church and was trying to get off welfare.
Two men and a woman are accused of murdering Evans and her children because they wanted her baby. It has not been revealed whether the three are welfare recipients. One of the male suspects was convicted in 1993 of criminal drug conspiracy.
Gingrich blamed "a welfare system which subsidized people for doing nothing; a criminal system which tolerated drug dealers; an educational system which allows kids to not learn and which rewards tenured teachers who can't teach, while destroying poor children who it traps."
Illinois Democrats said Gingrich's remarks were an illustration of his "lack of a moral compass."
"I am revolted that anyone would attempt to place blame on any segment of society for an act of such unspeakable brutality," Barbara Guttmann, executive director of the Illinois Democratic Party, said in a statement. "To try to win political points at a time like this is repulsive."
Gingrich made similar remarks a year ago after Susan Smith drowned her two sons in South Carolina, saying that case was one reason Americans should vote for Republican candidates.