[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
I think you should read the link I posted for Makavali.
Either way, my care for babies or the availability of welfare for them are not reasons for them to be put to death since they haven’t committed any capital offenses. Depriving an innocent person of life is the very definition of “bad for society.”[/quote]
Some would say putting a child into an abusive family is worse.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Notice after some arguement the point of supporting abortion comes down to doing away with “undesireables.”
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_iroe_v_wade/i_abort_crime
Did Roe v. Wade Abort Crime?
And Why Hardly Anybody Wants to Talk About It
Crime is down across America. The nation’s crime rate has been dropping for the best part of a decade now, and everyone is keen to take the credit. New York’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani claims that zero-tolerance policing is responsible; former California Governor Pete Wilson credits three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws; President Bill Clinton says gun control and federal funding for prison construction and new police officers have done their part.
Likely as not, they’re all partly right. But what if it turns out that other factors are actually having far more influence on the crime rate than these get-tough policies? Why lock up two million people–more than half of them nonviolent offenders–at a cost of tens of billions of dollars a year and the disruption of untold millions of lives, if the real explanations for the drop in crime lie elsewhere?
Last summer word began circulating, first in the academic community and then in the media, that two professors, John Donohue and Steven Levitt, had found solid evidence of exactly that: They had discovered a link much stronger, more statistically demonstrable, than the link between anticrime policies and crime rates. More shocking still, the link they found was between abortion and crime. Or to be more precise, between the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and the much heralded fall in crime rates starting about 18 years later, in the early 1990s.
When laid out in its crudest form, the notion that crime was dropping because potential criminals were being aborted provoked a firestorm of objections from left, right, and center. What terrible policy conclusions, people demanded to know, were they supposed to draw from this information? “Racist, genocidal stupidity,” the conservative monthly American Spectator labeled the new study. On the opposite political flank, Jackie Cissell, director of the Indiana Family Institute, wrote that “African Americans [are] in shock because it could threaten the very survival of the race.”
But if the smoke ever clears, progressive critics will find that the policies this new study actually points to are not shocking at all. In fact, they’re quite traditionally liberal.
John Donohue, a professor of law at Stanford University who once ran an unsuccessful campaign as a Democratic nominee for the Connecticut state senate, and Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, have long sought explanations for the falling crime rate. In a 1998 paper published by the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Donohue pointed out that the explanations people usually give just do not account for much statistically. According to his calculations, the large decline in crime during much of the 1990s was either a short-term anomaly or the result of factors that had not yet been identified. It was a hint of a fascinating new theory that he and his colleague were developing.
During the course of their research, Donohue and Levitt had almost accidentally stumbled upon the number of abortions performed in America and the fact that–in Donohue’s words–“poor, unmarried, young, low-education women tend to have more abortions. And their kids tend to have higher rates of crime.” The two researchers began crunching the numbers, and after several years they concluded, to their own surprise as much as anyone else’s, that fully half of the decrease in crime that has occurred over the past decade can be directly attributed to the fact that women in the 1970s and 1980s had ready access to abortion.
After exhaustive peer review lasting the better part of a year, their study, titled “Legalized Abortion and Crime,” is scheduled for publication in the May 2001 issue of Harvard University’s prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics. The authors hope that a longer version, specifically addressing many of the criticisms leveled against their work, will follow in a top law review.
Looking at state-by-state and year-by-year figures, the two professors found a remarkable correlation between abortion rates and crime rates 15 to 18 years later. And that’s not all. They also determined that in the states that legalized abortion prior to the Roe v. Wade ruling, crime rates began falling earlier than in other parts of the country (see box). Moreover, while the rate of arrests did drop in other age groups, among young people (those whose mothers had the option of a legal abortion) it dropped far more. The authors factored in a host of other possible explanations, and the correlation between crime rates and abortion remained powerful. “According to our estimates,” they boldly asserted, “legalized abortion is a primary explanation, accounting for at least one-half of the overall crime reduction… . The social benefit to reduced crime as a result of abortion may be on the order of $30 billion annually.”
That such an idea, put like this, would raise the hackles of an extraordinary range of people should have surprised no one. Levitt and Donohue had stepped into the vicious ethical and political minefield of the American abortion debate–as well as the treacherous terrain of race politics, since African Americans have abortions at a higher rate than whites. But the authors, economists rather than ethicists, were unprepared for the response and initially seemed almost too stunned to prepare counterarguments. “What’s odd about our study,” Levitt now reflects as he prepares for publication of the work and, presumably, renewed assaults on its authors, “is it manages to offend just about everybody. [But] our worldview is an economic worldview–that people respond to incentives. I view it as being apolitical.”
That lack of political savvy may explain much. “I don’t think it’s controversial to say crime is higher among African Americans,” Levitt still insists. “We’re not saying there’s anything intrinsic about this. There’s also higher poverty among African Americans. The causality is not important in our argument, in the sense of why it is that African Americans are disproportionately represented in the crime statistics.”
Given recent political history, however, and given the ways in which the poor–especially the black and Latino poor–have all too often been blamed and punished for the circumstances of their poverty, causality was certainly on many other people’s minds. Were Donohue and Levitt arguing that poor people were intrinsically, perhaps even biologically, predisposed to criminal behavior, or did they believe that the environmental conditions of poverty pushed people into crime? Were they conservatives or liberals, and why had they avoided showing their political hand in their academic presentation?
Add to this confusion the fact that conspiracy theories run rife in today’s inner city–theories that AIDS is a form of biological warfare against black populations, that the war on crime and drugs is a none too subtle attempt to destroy the social fabric of the inner city through mass incarceration, and that the easy availability of abortion is a means of racist population control–and this study could hardly be anything but explosive.
At the same time, anti-abortion groups accused the study of advocating the murder of unborn children as a crime control stratagem. “Naturally, if you kill off a million and a half people a year,” the executive director of the Pro-Life Action League declared sarcastically in a news release, “a few criminals will be in that number.” Meanwhile, many on the left of the political spectrum, including some in the pro-choice movement, denounced the report as little more than a call to arms against the poor. As if it had advocated for forced abortion, sterilization, or euthanasia against select elements of the American population, the study was seen as a bloody addendum to such bibles of the New Right as Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1996 book The Bell Curve.
But this is not, in fact, what the two authors were arguing. In the years after Roe v. Wade, they found, the number of abortions performed each year in America grew rapidly. By 1980 the annual total had reached 1.6 million, a statistic that has remained fairly constant ever since. Before this, the authors argue, more unwanted children were being born, often after unhealthy pregnancies during which the mother failed to look after herself adequately, and often into difficult, non-nurturing, impoverished environments. Such children, Donohue and Levitt assumed, would be more likely than others to grow up to commit crimes as troubled, angry, gang-affiliated teenagers and young adults. The authors cite evidence from studies in eastern Europe and Scandinavia that “unwanted children are likely to be disproportionately involved in criminal activities.” And it’s certainly plausible that the same would be true in the United States.
Donohue and Levitt’s data bear this out. Legalized abortion, they found, didn’t just lower the absolute number of people in a given age group; it disproportionately lowered the number of children born to mothers in impoverished circumstances who hadn’t intended to become pregnant and gave birth to babies they didn’t want. The effect on subsequent teenage arrest rates suggests that these were indeed the conditions that put children “most at risk of engaging in criminal behavior.”
Joseph McNamara, a Hoover Institute fellow, sees the connection as simple common sense. “Many years ago, when I was police chief of San Jose,” McNamara remembers, “I cooperated with Planned Parenthood, and I said: ‘Your organization prevents more crime than mine does.’ Children need love and nurturing. If there’s no one there to provide that [because a child is unwanted], many are going to commit crimes and violent behavior. You don’t have to be a criminologist to see that the children growing up under these conditions are at high risk. It’s an enormous problem for society to have children born that no one wants and no one’s able to take care of.”
Levitt and Donohue think of themselves as researchers, not advocates for any position–not even McNamara’s–and they are annoyed that others see their study as promoting forced abortion. “It seems such a puerile logical step,” Donohue says. “A completely incorrect reading of the study. One wonders how presumably intelligent people could make such an incorrect logical inference.” Far from having any ax to grind about abortion and crime, Donohue, raised as a Catholic, says he resisted making this connection until the evidence he and Levitt compiled proved overwhelming.
But by presenting only their study’s results and not the social meaning they saw in it, the two researchers left both the study and themselves vulnerable. “John and I are good at taking data and understanding [it]. We have no expertise in making moral or ethical judgments,” Levitt says. “We bring this to the table to add to the debate, but certainly not to solve the debate.” They might have diffused much of the criticism leveled against them, however, if they had joined forthrightly in the policy debate from the start, presenting their study as Donohue privately acknowledges they see it–as evidence that get-tough anticrime policies have less effect on crime than most people think and that allowing women to choose when to have children has more.
[/quote]
Gotta make sure them undesireables don’t live, eh? Of course, at that point, they aren’t guilty of anything.
[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
So if parents at some point become financially or emotionally unstable, are the children then murdered? Usually, if the situation gets bad enough, the state intervenes and places them in foster care. [/quote]
So it comes back to foster care then. Are YOU willing to look after these children? If not, then STFU about the sanctity of human life, because it’s pretty clear your selective about where that applies.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Gotta make sure them undesireable don’t live, eh? [/quote]
Yes.
Is that harsh? Yep, but I don’t care. If I could find out whether a child is going to be a rapist or murderer I’d kill 'em. And I wouldn’t think twice.
Is that what you wanted to hear?
[quote]Makavali wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
I think you should read the link I posted for Makavali.
Either way, my care for babies or the availability of welfare for them are not reasons for them to be put to death since they haven’t committed any capital offenses. Depriving an innocent person of life is the very definition of “bad for society.”
Some would say putting a child into an abusive family is worse.[/quote]
Do you have to convince yourself they’re “better off dead,” to sleep at night?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Do you have to convince yourself they’re “better off dead,” to sleep at night?[/quote]
No. I know they’re better off dead.
Are these the sort of outrageous responses you wanted?
[quote]Makavali wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Gotta make sure them undesireable don’t live, eh?
Yes.
Is that harsh? Yep, but I don’t care. If I could find out whether a child is going to be a rapist or murderer I’d kill 'em. And I wouldn’t think twice.
Is that what you wanted to hear?[/quote]
Wow. Ok, no need for further debate.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
So if parents at some point become financially or emotionally unstable, are the children then murdered? Usually, if the situation gets bad enough, the state intervenes and places them in foster care.
So it comes back to foster care then. Are YOU willing to look after these children? If not, then STFU about the sanctity of human life, because it’s pretty clear your selective about where that applies.[/quote]
My behavior has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the assertions I’ve made. You’re still using logical fallacy.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Do you have to convince yourself they’re “better off dead,” to sleep at night?
No. I know they’re better off dead.
Are these the sort of outrageous responses you wanted?[/quote]
At least you guys are finally being honest.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Makavali wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Gotta make sure them undesireable don’t live, eh?
Yes.
Is that harsh? Yep, but I don’t care. If I could find out whether a child is going to be a rapist or murderer I’d kill 'em. And I wouldn’t think twice.
Is that what you wanted to hear?
Wow. Ok, no need for further debate.[/quote]
I think I agree. This has probably passed the point of useful discussion.
[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
My behavior has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the assertions I’ve made.[/quote]
What?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Makavali wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Gotta make sure them undesireable don’t live, eh?
Yes.
Is that harsh? Yep, but I don’t care. If I could find out whether a child is going to be a rapist or murderer I’d kill 'em. And I wouldn’t think twice.
Is that what you wanted to hear?
Wow. Ok, no need for further debate.[/quote]
Actually, I’m saying that your questions are somewhat pointless and don’t encourage debate.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
My behavior has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the assertions I’ve made.
What?[/quote]
Let me see if I can spell it out for you:
Thirty five million unwanted pregnancies brought to term would have had severe social consequences. Like it or not we have dodged a bullet thanks to Roe v Wade. We can’t care for all the kids we have now. Thirty five million more would just leave them in an even worse position.
I personally know a few women who were drinking heavily or doing drugs when they became pregnant. When they terminated their pregnancies the motivation was that they did not want to produce a baby with fetal alchohol syndrome or a baby with a bad drug addiction. They didn’t feel good about getting an abortion but they really didn’t want to be responsible for an FAS or addict baby.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
My point was this. You prolifers are quite willing to force others to have babies they don’t want, because you care sooo much about the baby. But the moment the top of the baby’s head sees daylight for the first time you change your tune to “you’re on your own now kid. Don’t you ever become a problem for me!”.
[/quote]
This is the quote of the pro-deathers. I keep hearing this over and over.
But there is a problem. The person who got pregnant chose to.
Yes, chose to. By not keeping her legs closed, or using protection.
And before you say it, my daughter is a result of this. If we had believed in abortion, she would not be here. I have thought of this before as I have looked at her.
Years later there was a “mistake” made, and there was a possibility of my wife again being pregnant. This time she wasn’t. But we would have gone through with the pregnancy. And with here medical problems, that would have been hard.
But the point is that we engaged in sex, and from that point on, we have already chosen the results.
It is rather rude to think of children, babies, fetuses, whatever as things. Something to be discarded because it is a nuisance. And this is extremely selfish behavior.
Then nothing but excuses are made. All those babies that would need to be adopted, are. Yes there are hard to place cases, but there is no problem with adopting a regular child. (Other then the stupid politics.) Sometimes it can be quick, but can take years. Which is why many people do international adoption.
At one time we did look into adoption, and of a child, not a baby. But the specific child we were interested in was snatched up before we got very far into the process. (Was actually a friend of our daughter at the time.)
Your arguments fall right within the standard quotes of people who like to talk about these things, but don’t even consider it for themselves.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Thirty five million unwanted pregnancies brought to term would have had severe social consequences. Like it or not we have dodged a bullet thanks to Roe v Wade. We can’t care for all the kids we have now. Thirty five million more would just leave them in an even worse position.
I personally know a few women who were drinking heavily or doing drugs when they became pregnant. When they terminated their pregnancies the motivation was that they did not want to produce a baby with fetal alchohol syndrome or a baby with a bad drug addiction. They didn’t feel good about getting an abortion but they really didn’t want to be responsible for an FAS or addict baby.[/quote]
Ah yes. Unwanted children.
How many of these people didn’t use any form of birth control just because they thought, “Oh, i’ll just get an abortion.” Actually I knew one of these people. (3 abortions before she was 20.)
Also have you read anything about fetal alcohol syndrome, specifically by the people who did the research that made this problems known? At least one of them is disgusted that people get the idea that a small amount of alcohol could cause this problem. When actually it takes very serious drinking to cause this problem.
Anyway it is nice to know you want to eliminate the “undesirables” from society.
On a personal note, I will say that the unexpected parenthood has made me a better person.
Mage, congrats on fatherhood, but you sound like a well-adjusted person capable of raising a child.
I’m sorry if any of the content of this thread has offended you, but there just aren’t enough people available or willing to adopt unwanted children.
Can you honestly say all the children born via unplanned pregnancy are going to grow up in stable homes? True, planned pregnancies can also result in unstable environments too, but I’m willing to wager that the incidence of this would be much lower.
I also note that you said WIFE. Marriage usually entails children, no? Your child wasn’t entirely unplanned, just early.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Also have you read anything about fetal alcohol syndrome, specifically by the people who did the research that made this problems known? At least one of them is disgusted that people get the idea that a small amount of alcohol could cause this problem. When actually it takes very serious drinking to cause this problem.[/quote]
There is significant confusion. And even now they don’t know how much can actually trigger FAS.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists conducted a study of over 400,000 women, all of whom had consumed alcohol during pregnancy. No case of fetal alcohol syndrome occurred and no adverse effects on children were found when consumption was under 8.5 drinks per week.
I guess it’s a matter of how much you consider to be serious drinking. 8.5 drinks = more than 1 per day, but whether that is serious is a matter of interpretation.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
Mage, congrats on fatherhood, but you sound like a well-adjusted person capable of raising a child.
I’m sorry if any of the content of this thread has offended you, but there just aren’t enough people available or willing to adopt unwanted children.
Can you honestly say all the children born via unplanned pregnancy are going to grow up in stable homes? True, planned pregnancies can also result in unstable environments too, but I’m willing to wager that the incidence of this would be much lower.
I also note that you said WIFE. Marriage usually entails children, no? Your child wasn’t entirely unplanned, just early.[/quote]
She was pregnant her senior year to tell you the truth.
But you are not getting my point. Abortion is being used as a form of birth control, preventing people from acting responsibly.
If abortion was not available, there would not be as many children born because more people would be using birth control.
But as far as unwanted children, yes there are many unwanted children right now. Should we abort them?
I actually saw a news report years ago where it was suggested that because of postpartum depression, it should be legal for a mother to kill her child within the first year after birth.
I know people have strong feelings about this subject. I understand the side that wants the abortions. My point is that there are two separate biological organisms there, and one will be destroyed as a result of two of the others actions. First she chose the action that got her pregnant. Next she chose to eliminate that organism for convenience.
I know people are trying to care about the person who got pregnant. But she did perform an act to get pregnant, and the fetus did not take any action in this matter, and yet is the one who is being eliminated.
I need to mention that if abortion was not available, the increase in the number of children would not be the same as the number of abortions performed. People’s actions would be affected as a result. Birth control would become more of an issue for people.
My basic philosophy is this, make him wear a condom, or get on the pill, or don’t fuck.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
My basic philosophy is this, make him wear a condom, or get on the pill, or don’t fuck.[/quote]
Pretty good philosophy.