Do unwanted babies become criminals?

[Chancellare]

This is an offshoot of another thread “Abortion lowers Crime”. Somebody raised the explanations in the book “Freakonomics” which supposedly advanced this theory. But the available info did not show the statistical proofs like correlation charts and regression equations, etc.

The authors of Freakonomics seemd to bank on the premise that their readers will not care to look at the regression analysis (if ever they really did it) but will just take their words for it.

But enough with that.

What the authors actually based their theory on was the relationship between being “unwanted” and “becoming a criminal” later on.
They theorized that mothers who wanted abortion were actually begetting future criminals because they did not want their babies to be born.
This seems to be a plausible theory at first glance but if you consider the following, it becomes less convincing:

1. How many unwanted babies grow up to become criminals?
   or the reverse question:
2. How many criminals come from unwanted pregnancies?

Can anybody provide clinical proof please?

 

[puzzleannie]

no they can’t because there is none.
every baby is a wanted baby. There are far more healthy stable married couples wanting to adopt than their are babies allowed to be born who would qualify for adoption.

 

[JimG]

They theorized that mothers who wanted abortion were actually begetting future criminals because they did not want their babies to be born.

So are the authors favoring a pre-emptive death penalty here?

(i.e., this child might not be wanted, and might therefore become a criminal, consequently the child must be killed immediately.) It kind of turns jurisprudence on its head.

 

[Chancellare]

So are the authors favoring a pre-emptive death penalty here?

(i.e., this child might not be wanted, and might therefore become a criminal, consequently the child must be killed immediately.) It kind of turns jurisprudence on its head.

Glad you raised this issue on death penalty too. This is a serious issue that might have been taken lightly by casual reading. Our minds have been blunted by relativism in the secular mass media that many are no longer horrified by such implications.

I raised this thread in the hope of gathering empirical data to debunk the Freakonomics theory as stated in OP. This because most of the debates I encountered with secular and non-Catholic posters ended with accusations that Catholics are mindless moralists with no scientific proofs to back up their stand.

 

[Holly3278]

Nope, not always! Most babies grow up to be productive adults and this includes unwanted babies! Also, if a baby is unwanted then why doesn’t the mother just give the baby up for adoption?

 

[AndyF]

Chancellare:

I should think the causative factor would be that these children are more prone to not having a proper upbringing, not that they were simply born unwanted. For every child unwanted, there are many potential parents to take their place.

AndyF

 

[Ani_Ibi]

So are the authors favoring a pre-emptive death penalty here?

(i.e., this child might not be wanted, and might therefore become a criminal, consequently the child must be killed immediately.) It kind of turns jurisprudence on its head.

Yeah sort of turns the criminal justice system and the burden of proof into a science fiction scenario along the lines of Minority Report. Mindreading as the science of the future! :hypno: