Posted on 10/29/2011 11:25:43 AM PDT by wagglebee
There has been a controversial meme circulating for several years which holds that the abortion right resulted unintentionally in a reduction in crime. The idea, I think, is that the fetuses who became medical waste would, but for being aborted, have become children raised in unstable homes and poor environments, leading many, thereafter, to commit crimes in disproportionate numbers. It has raised hackles, as well it should.
Here’s the latest example of the assertion in a program called Freakonomics. From the transcript of “Misadventures in Baby Making:”
LEVITT: So, what does this legalized abortion have to do with crime? Well, the argument’s really simple, that there’s enormous volumes of scholarship going back fifty years that suggests that unwanted children are at risk for crime. Basically if your mother doesn’t love you, nothing very good is going to happen to you in your life. It’s also pretty clear that after legalized abortion became available, the number of unwanted children plummeted, so we see that the number of domestic children put up for adoption went way down. And in surveys, if you ask women whether they had unwanted births, those went way down as well. So, those two simple pieces of the argument are all it takes. Unwanted children are at risk for crime, and after legalized abortion the number of unwanted children went way down. Therefore, after legalized abortion, crime should go way down if you wait sixteen to eighteen years to the point where that cohort exposed to legalized abortion actually becomes old enough to be in the criminal ages.
DUBNER: That was the theory, at least. And as Levitt found, the data backed it up: Roe v. Wade, a decision meant to increase a woman’s reproductive control, was never intended to decrease crime in the U.S. But it did! Again, like the ultrasound [led to sex selection abortion], a natal development that had the most unintended of consequences.
Even if true, it is irrelevant to the morality of the matter (which the program didn’t address). But I don’t think one can come anywhere near stating that abortion caused a reduction in crime directly–in a 1 + 1 = 2 type formula–as asserted by the show’s hosts.
Remember, the post Roe era was also the time of increased “law and order” campaigns. The Feds and states throughout the USA toughened criminal punishments, took much sentencing discretion out of the hands of judges with minimum jail requirements, etc. We built new prisons by the score. “Three Strikes” laws put repeat violent criminals away, using even non violent crimes as the basis. Whether one agrees with those policies or not, they certainly impacted the crime rate. In fact, so much was spent on incarcerating people that some complain more is spent on prisons than schools.
Other factors no doubt went into the reduced crime rate as well. For example, many states stopped treating marijuana possession as a felony. If something ceases to be criminal, the crime rate goes down.
So, did abortion reduce the crime rate? Who knows? Who cares? It really doesn’t matter–unless one thinks that we have to encourage “certain people” not to procreate as a means of reducing crime. If we go there, we are off a moral cliff that looks an awful lot like the old eugenics.
The ONLY THING that matters is that 53 MILLION INNOCENT AMERICANS have been slaughtered.
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To a liberal this has two parts. "30,000,000 have been black. The other 23,000,000 have been collateral damage. Oh well. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs!"
Did Roe v. Wade reduce the number of American genius scientists, musicians, and leaders?
Sure it did.
It killed over 50 million people, so statistics indicate and experts say......
There's no telling how many diseases would have been cured without this holocaust.
It reduced humanity: less crime, less inventions, less economic activity, less yelling & screaming & fighting, less words of love & encouragement & support, less pizzas delivered, less prayers on knees in the dark of night, less babies crying at busstops. In fine: less of God’s glory & creation.
If you combine the rise and fall crack epidemic with economic developments and better policing techniques, you get a pretty good explanation for why crime statistics fell in the late 1990s.
Can you tell me where you got those stat’s. so I might pass them on? Thanks in advance.
without putting to fine a point on it, if i had to guess i'd say more white babies were aborted than any other color
It’s not being unwanted that makes children very likely to grow up to be criminals. It’s being born into a fatherless, dysfunctional family in a high-crime subculture. Plenty of mothers in that situation want their babies and their babies grow up bad.
Women in better circumstances and of better character who don’t want their babies will either make the necessary adjustments in attitude or place their babies for adoption, and those babies will probably grow up law-abiding.
Pre-emptive capital punishment reduces crime. So say the pro-abortion crowd. So why don’t they back capital punishment for the truly guilty?
With the emphasis on "fatherless." Growing up without a father, irrespective of geography or economics, is the main predictor of crime. Legal abortion is a main reason we have so many fatherless "families": both men and women act as if sex has no consequences, since the technology exists to prevent live births. Both men and women, in many cases, treat children as if they are solely the property and the responsibility of the mother, since the father has no legal recourse if the woman chooses to abort, and few options if she chooses to exclude him from the child's life.
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