Legalised Abortion Reduces Crime

Satanus

A study of the 30 - 40% fall of the american crime rate from 1991 to 1999 has been attributed to the legalisation of abortion 18 yrs earlier. The idea is that the number of unwanted and thus neglected babies/children was reduced. Being unwanted and neglected often leads children to problems including crime.

First, we demonstrate that crime rates began to fall 18 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across the nation, just the point at which babies born under legalized abortion would be reaching the peak adolescent crime years. In my opinion, this is the weakest of our four data analyses. In a simple time series, many factors are negatively correlated with crime. Furthermore, the world is a complicated place and it would be simplistic to believe that legalized abortion could overpower all other social determinants of crime.

Second, we show that the five states that legalized abortion in 1970--three years before Roe vs. Wade--saw crime begin to decrease roughly three years earlier than the rest of the nation. This is a bit more convincing to me but still far from conclusive.

Third, we demonstrate that states with high abortion rates in the mid-1970s have had much greater crime decreases in the 1990s than states that had low abortion rates in the 1970s. This relationship holds true even when we take into account changes in the size of prison populations, number of police, poverty rates, measures of the economy, changes in welfare generosity, and other changes in fertility. This is the evidence that really starts to be convincing, in my opinion.

http://www.slate.com/id/33569/entry/33571/ You can view/download the complete paper at http://www.jcpr.org/wpfiles/levitt.pdf?CFID=5733951&CFTOKEN=79622885

Comments, rants, or raves?

S

Ps steven levitt is a Harvard undergrad, a PhD from MIT, professor at University of Chicago Department of Economics, Research fellow at the American Bar Foundation, etc. Not that that means anything.

JWdaughter

The problem with these kind of stats is it is hard to count the effect of the lives lost that were going to be wonderful, gifted, giving, heroes. Love her or hate her, Ophrah Winfrey has done a lot of good in the world. Yet by many accounts-too bad her mom, young, poor, unmarried, black, not nurturing (at best) didn't have an abortion. How many leaders and wonderful people were born after a '7 mo. pregnancy' (you know, all those early babies). How many of those people are personal friends? I know a few.

I simply find that those kind of 'hopeful' statistics could not do anything to convince me that abortion is a desirable outcome. I have had too many challenging pregnancies, and seen too many. . .all those millions of babies killed-because maybe 10% would end up in jail? Is all crime worth a death sentence to people? Cause that is what it seems that putting up those kind of stats would say.

OTOH, I know people who would choose to never have kids, and who would have abortions if confronted with a pregnancy. I think if they wish to be sterilized that society/medicine should not stop them from doing so. Separate issue though.

Satanus

Jwdaughter

They do suggest that, rather than using abortion as a solution, things should be improved for single mothers. This guy is a math whiz who applies math to many phenomana in life, like that guy in that crime movie, who always figures out who the crook was by using complicated math, probabilities, and that. He wrote a book called freakanomics.

S

Satanus

On the other hand, if that would have kept oprah off tv ...

S

ColdRedRain

Eugenics, anybody?

Terry

75% of everything is crap. I'm terribly sorry that this applies to people.

An aborted child filters the numeric possibilities of the 100%.

If 25% of the 100% would be ____potentially___wonderful citizens, and they might---what guarantee is there that this potential would be realized?

Under the best possible circumstance each of us has a struggle. But, under the worst possible circumstance this struggle can be dishearteningly insurmountable!

1.A mother who does not want us.

2.Being born in poverty, a ghetto and among rampant social instability

3.An absent or indifferent father

4.Surrounded by drugs, gangs, violence and poor/no education opportunity

Abortion, sadly, destroys the 100% containing the 75% crap and the "potentially" 25% contributing, talented member of society.

The fact that we are talking about particular races makes it UNMENTIONABLE and the argument is turned to silence.

If you work the numbers ( a cold methodology, admittedly) you can see how the premise might well be a sound one.

I grew up in an entirely black neighborhood and my only playmates were very poor black children from single-parent families. When I went into their house and saw how they lived I almost could not believe it. The advent of legislation that created "opportunity" opened many doors and not a few have chosen to move forward. But, the culture of the poor, the minority and the indifferent is a culture incomprehensible to those who have a different core value system.

Satanus

Btw, i was joking about oprah

Coldredrain

Eugenics

How so?

Good points, terry. In todays politically correct society, certain subjects are unmentionable. Steven levitt (jewish) is a man among men, who seems to call it like it is. In some of his other papers, he has had the ba!!$ to compare the reading abilities of black children w those of white children. Gasp!

S

Satanus

The thing is, levitts is not advocating anything (at least in thematerial that i read). He is studying different aspects and segments of society by applying complex algorithms. He has used this method in examining cheating in sumo wrestling, teachers cheating (they were investigated and subsequently fired), economics of drug dealing, and other things. In our programmed society, some of his findings push our buttons.

S

Legalised Abortion Reduces Crime

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