Freakonomics: more abortions means fewer crimes!

[Penny_Plain]

There was an X-Files episode about this.

Mulder found a genie and got three wishes. He wished for world peace.

The genie granted his wish by killing everyone in the world except him.

 

[WestonGrant]

Wow. I never saw that, but it’s right on!

 

[Pious_Mat]

Even if, statistically, more abortions correlate to less crime, Levitt (or anybody else for that matter) has never proved that the two are mutually inclusive.

It is just like saying that the declining number of pirates in the Carribean Sea has caused global warming. Statistics prove it is so, but the two obviously arent’ mutually inclusive. As Mark Twain said, (and I think has been echoed before on this forum) there are lies, there are damned lies, and then there are statistics."

 

[Delphinus85]

I was watching an interview with Freakonomics author Levitt last night. As smooth as can be he said that he had applied all other possible factors to the lower crime rate at the end of the 80s and just couldn’t come up with a correlation. Finally he hit on abortion.

Such compelling science I have not seen since Cheech and Chong.

In any case, here we have a dilemma in the popular media mind:

1. 
   *]Do we let ‘unwanted’ children live and then execute them for mass murder when they grow up? Or
   *]Do we take the Minority Report route and kill them before they are even born?
   Now, for Catholics, Option 1 is technically a prudential question for which the answer is yes/no/maybe, but Option 2 is always an infallibly defined question for which the answer is NO.
   
   But what about the rest of the planet? What kind of an un-Occam-like-cutting-tool-quandary must they be floundering around with?
   
   Well that’s the logic of the thing. Let’s look at the premise. I mean is there actually a correlation between abortion and a lower crime rate? Steve Sailer seems to think that this correlation is … er … total jabberwocky.
   
   ‘Freakonomics’ Abortion Research Is Faulted by a Pair of Economists

1. 
   Yikes! Thoughts on this? Anyone?
   
   It makes me sick. I hate when they say unwanted children should be killed. Not only was I unwanted, I was covcieved out of wedlock (although my parents married before I was born) and my mom was an alcoholic and my dad was abusive. I speak on behalf of unwanted kids, I’d rather live and make my own choices (I am not happily married, a college grad, and LOVING life) then have someone kill me because my mom “made a mistake.” It makes me so mad that people say other children, and myself included deserve to be killed. It makes me so mad I could cry. I don’t, nor did I ever want to die before I had a chance to make my own decisions, just because others like me made bad decisions. SICK!

 

[Tim_Kirchoff]

I remember reading a rebuttal to this; it asserted that abrtion led to even more crime. Having abortion as a “backup plan” meant that many people became more careless and did not use condoms, resulting in more pregnancies, and many young women found that they could not murder their own unborn child, consequentially leading to more “unwanted” children.

 

[Theodore]

I remember reading a rebuttal to this; it asserted that abrtion led to even more crime. Having abortion as a “backup plan” meant that many people became more careless and did not use condoms, resulting in more pregnancies, and many young women found that they could not murder their own unborn child, consequentially leading to more “unwanted” children.

Pro-Abortionist are a dying race .

 

[curioosbadger]

Since contraceptives were legalized in this country, child abuse has skyrocketed.

source? seems like a rather odd cause and effect, “mommy only has babies when she wants to… so she beats me”?

Divorce went from practically nonexsistant to 50% of all new marriages

how does abortion relate to divorce? its reasonable enough to conclude that not having a child to hold the marrige together lets it fall apart, but is that really so bad? supposing there are other children, which might be potentially harmed by the divorce, would more children have prevented the divorce? Im thinking no.

growing up in a fatherless home is the main predictor for criminal activity later in life.

Source? and again, doesnt really relate to abortion at all.

Sexual abuse and assault has skyrocketed.

source? the one I found has it going down.

prevent-abuse-now.com/stats.htm#Substantiated

Violence among the young is up drastically.

nope.
youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/violence-in-schools/national-statistics.html

Post-abortive mothers frequently have difficulty bonding to later children because of their guilt over their dead child (leading to more unloved children, not fewer).

So then you understand that trying to guilt trip people into not having abortions is ruining peoples lives?

Infanticide is nothing odd anymore; several dead babies were found in this area a year or so back and I don’t think they managed to even prosecute, much less convict, anyone.

link? fact of the matter is teenagers are stupid and lazy, even with birth control and abortion, theyre still stupid and lazy. luckily though, they have parents, which presumably notice their little girls swelling belly or at the very least, the sudden disappearance of that swollen belly.

Earlier this year, a woman shot herself in the stomach shortly after her labor pains started, then claimed she’d been attacked… she got barely a slap on the wrist, but only because she filed a false police report. (And then read a “loving” poem at her baby’s funeral… )

link?.. and Im only asking because I hope you made this one up, thats just horrible. even still, what accounts for that womans horribleness? Ignorance Im sure, but there has got to be more to it than that.

The presence of abortion in such staggering numbers has made violence more likely, not less.

nuh uh.

If some people don’t matter, who does? And Margaret Sanger would be very happy with the racist implications of saying that aborting poor minority babies makes the world a better place.

well, thats why its called pro choice. the mother gets to choose, not them, not me, not you.

a baby isnt a punishment. Imagine if we had a law where people convicted of promesquity were forced to adopt a child… it wouldnt do anyone any good to say the least.

 

[vera_dicere]

I’m sure abortion has taken out a few homicidal maniacs, but you have to take the “good” with the bad and acknowledge its taken out more doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, writers, peace makers, scolars, scientists, perhaps even the cure for AIDS and Cancer!

I personally and professionally know of more “middle” and “upper class” individuals who have aborted, people who generally wouldn’t spawn maniacs, these people could have very easily raised those children not to be killers. And would those aborted “criminals” have ended up “criminals” if they had been adopted instead of murdered?

 

[curioosbadger]

Well thanks for picking this up, I only realized later that the thread had been dead for over a year

I think youre looking at it from the wrong end, that abortion is the solution to crime. its a train of thought that leads to a situation where pregnancies would have to be licensed, unqualified mothers would be forced to have an abortion- I think we can all agree that that situation is bad.

but if you want to use adoption as a cure all to avoid abortion, well, how has that been working out? Its great when people adopt, but we could certainly use more adopters before we go out of our way to generate any more snowflake babies.

As much as we like to celebrate our Einsteins and Newtons, their idea’s wern’t inherent to them, the pile of carbon, but arose through their life experiences. Anyone is capable of curing cancer or aids, it just takes effort and effort is driven by positive feedback. all those qualities (intelligence, wit, wisdom, knowledgeably etc) are all the same thing: effort. so tell a kid he’s smart, it could bring us that much closer to curing cancer.

 

[taylorc]

but if you want to use adoption as a cure all to avoid abortion, well, how has that been working out? Its great when people adopt, but we could certainly use more adopters before we go out of our way to generate any more snowflake babies.

There are tons of people who are waiting to adopt.

 

[curioosbadger]

tons, but enough?

ithaca.edu/faculty/cduncan/230/adoption.htm

 

[taylorc]

There are more people wanting to adopt than babies available. That’s why the waiting list is so long. The kids waiting in foster care were almost never put up for adoption as infants.

 

[vera_dicere]

In regards to licensing pregnancies and parenthood, perhaps we should look at sterilisation of men and women who are child abusers and serial aborters. I’ve met people who have ruined children’s lives and are absolute monsters. You abuse and torture a dog you’re generally banned from having a pet for the rest of your life in some cases. The same shoudl apply for children.

I’m not advocating overall licensing just the removal of the opportunity for women who have had children removed from their custody to have any more - I actually met a woman who had four of her children removed for horrific abuse and she just went out and got pregnant again to have another one - who was now in hospital for abuse and neglect!

But if abortion prevents crime - then why not take out babies and children already born once they start to show criminal mindsets? Squish a bug? Kick a cat? Symptoms of a possible homicidal manaic. Maybe we should also sterilise all their related family members in case its genetic? Perhaps look at sterilising all her make less then a certain amount? Or instead of school zones “sterilisation” and “abortion” zones as some areas have higher rates of crime then others.

Essentially, the point of abortion lowering crime, apart from being grossely innocorrect, will lead down a nasty slope.

That’s the problem with the pro-choice to kill unborn children group - they don’t have foresight to see where their wretchedly flawed logic will lead.

Maybe we should just sterilise all Pro-choice to kill unborn children people.

 

[MarieVeronica]

I don’t think he is trying to argue that abortion is good because it lowers the crime rate. It is like saying “More murder means fewer crimes”

Agreed. The “statement” in the title of this thread… fails to take into consideration that ABORTION IS A CRIME… against the Law of God!

 

[didymus]

From today’s Freakonomics blog:

The Times recently reported the death of Constance E. Cook, a former assemblywoman from upstate New York who co-wrote the measure that legalized abortion in that state in 1970, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade did so for most of the rest of the country.
While the history of Roe is widely known — and, indeed, widely revisited on a regular basis — it is often forgotten that New York and four other states (California, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii) had already made abortion legal within their borders. It was these early adopters, in fact, that provided one key piece of evidence in Steve Levitt and John Donohue’s argument that legalized abortion ultimately led to a drop in crime (for a measure of an abortion-crime correlation in these states in conjunction with a similar relationship in the other, later states, helped establish a causal link between abortion and crime).

I’m so proud my state was an “early adopter”.

Of course, if not for Roe abortion would have had to go thru each state legislature and could have been reconsidered here in NY.

 

[curioosbadger]

taylorc> what then when there are 6x as many?

vera dicere> thats what prison is for. and no one is saying abortion prevents crime, just that it makes more healthy, productive, stable homes.

Maybe we should just sterilise all Pro-choice to kill unborn children people.

hey, now you’re getting it, let them sterilize themselves if you think theyre so horrible.

 

[didymus]

I just ran across a story that a site that sells highly offensive “humorous” t-shirts is shutting down because the owner can’t take being bombarded with hate mail anymore:

Now, I can’t say I’m surprised we’re getting hate mail from people who have nothing better to do than to start half-a**ed campaigns because of their lazy, just enough passion for an email, ideals towards a misguided cause. It happened when we did our first really controversial shirt, “The School Shootings Tour”, it happened when we did our “What About All The Good Things Hitler Did” shirt, it happened when we did our “Arrest Black Babies Before They Become Criminals” shirt (boy did it happen then).

So people considered a satirical t-shirt worthy of a protest but not pre-natal execution w/o trial?

 

[neat62]

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/ncsucr2.gif

Note: The serious violent crimes included are rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and homicide.
(For related data about homicide trends, see Homicide Trends in the U.S.). The National Crime Victimization Survey redesign was implemented in 1993; the area with the lighter shading is before the redesign and the darker area after the redesign.

Could this new way of data collecting have a part in all this?

 

[lilbowpeep32]

“The numbers we’re talking about, in terms of crime, are absolutely trivial when you compare it to the broader debate on abortion. From a pro-life view of the world: If abortion is murder then we have a million murders a year through abortion. And the few thousand homicides that will be prevented according to our analysis are just nothing—they are a pebble in the ocean relative to the tragedy that is abortion. So, my own view, when we [did] the study and it hasn’t changed is that: our study shouldn’t change anybody’s opinion about whether abortion should be legal and easily available or not. It’s really a study about crime, not abortion.”-Steven Levitt.
If you don’t understand that he published his paper not to spite you and your religion, but did it because he felt it was his duty as a scientist to explore the truth, then I pity you. May you someday remove the blindfold that other people have persuaded you to wear with the letters G-O-D painted on the inside, only listening to what they scream at you, instead of reading what is truly right in front of you… This quote clearly shows that he sees how people like the author of this thread could take it, and shows that he does not intend for it to be taken that way.

 

[lilbowpeep32]

Pro-Abortionist are a dying race .

Yes you would know, seeing as how you actually listen to opinions of many different ethnicities, religions, and races of people instead of getting all your information on the matter from a catholic forum on a topic COMPLETELY mis-understanding the point of someones research and condemming him to hell because of it.