While interviewing Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), CNN’s Dana Bash posed a question that perfectly encapsulates how dark our abortion politics are: Wouldn’t poor children be better off dead?

“Arkansas already struggles to support vulnerable children,” Bash said. “Nearly 1 in 4 children in Arkansas lives in poverty. More than 4,600 kids are already in your state’s overloaded foster care system. Do you really think that your state is prepared to protect and care for even more children if abortion does become illegal there?”

Wouldn’t those poor children be better off in a Planned Parenthood wastebasket than living in Arkansas?

Bash is implying that abortion is a solution to poverty and that children who might end up being born into poverty or put into foster care would be better off dead. It’s similar to what we have heard from Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen. Never mind that California has nearly identical rates of child poverty and children in foster care as Arkansas despite being a haven for abortion-obsessed politicians. Clearly, in their minds, poor children or children born into difficult circumstances are worth less than others.

If the problem is the number of children in foster care, then we should be talking about misguided incentives or the substantial red tape around adoption. If the problem is poverty, then we should be discussing poverty. While Democrats pretend they own that issue because Republicans are only “pro-birth” and not pro-life, it is California, the model Democratic state, that has the highest poverty rate in the country. Abortion does not solve either.

Bash and others resort to dark rhetoric about abortion and the poor because they want abortion to be seen as a numbers game, not a procedure designed to end human life. They want to sanitize the issue as much as possible, trying to paint it as just another healthcare decision or something that is good for the economy. But what they are actually saying is that life is not worth living for some children. That grim worldview must not be accepted.