This theory in the Freakonamics book has been discredited from a scientific standpoint.

I wouldn't think it has any effect on crime rates. I would assume that total number of crimes is affected.

That Swift fellow was certainly on to something when he proposed having the Irish eat their children...

 

Does it lower the crime rate? Maybe it does, I don't know. But so would instituting the death penalty for any felony offense. Any time a society begins killing off its "undesirables" (be they unborn child or hardened criminal), society gets eliminates whatever evil that particular person may have perpetrated in their lifetime. The costs, in my opinion, of allowing citizens to have the power of life and death over their fellow citizens, are too terrible to be permitted. (And it goes without saying that the government itself should not have that power.)

This theory in the Freakonamics book has been discredited from a scientific standpoint.

 

Outside of some academic quibbling over methodology, I haven't seen anything that would suggest the theory has been "discredited."

Outside of some academic quibbling over methodology, I haven't seen anything that would suggest the theory has been "discredited."

Same here.

That Swift fellow was certainly on to something when he proposed having the Irish eat their children...

 

Does it lower the crime rate? Maybe it does, I don't know. But so would instituting the death penalty for any felony offense. Any time a society begins killing off its "undesirables" (be they unborn child or hardened criminal), society gets eliminates whatever evil that particular person may have perpetrated in their lifetime. The costs, in my opinion, of allowing citizens to have the power of life and death over their fellow citizens, are too terrible to be permitted. (And it goes without saying that the government itself should not have that power.)

Legalized abortion doesn't give the government "killing power" though...just the right for people to choose. If this theory is correct...then maybe it just says that when given a choice...people tend to make a correct one.

Preposterous notion. If that's the case, let's get down to the nitty gritty. If the prison population is mostly black, should we get fine tuned and promote black abortions? If those in prison that have committed white collar crime come mostly from white accountants, should we then promote the abortion of babies that would be born to white accountants?

 

Simply retarded notion IMO.

I think you are making a fairly big leap here...

Legalized abortion doesn't give the government "killing power" though...just the right for people to choose. If this theory is correct...then maybe it just says that when given a choice...people tend to make a correct one.

 

Amen. Just like legalized drinking at age 21 doesn't mean you have to do it. You just have the choice. And there are a million other similar situations.

 

Just because abortion is legal, it doesn't even come close to giving the government "killing power."

Legalized abortion doesn't give the government "killing power" though...just the right for people to choose. If this theory is correct...then maybe it just says that when given a choice...people tend to make a correct one.

 

I apologize for adding what was probably an uncessary sentence at the very end. The abortion question does not fall within the "government power" referenced later. That particular practice, to my mind, falls squarely within Americans having the power to kill other Americans.

 

To phrase it differently, the final parenthetical interruptor was merely a blanket statement that I find the practice of allowing governments to have the power of life and death over its citizens is tyrannical. It had little to do with what was above it, other than that I view the first section (limitation on individual power to kill other citizens) as an extension of the broader concept of limitation on government power. I believe that ALL people should be allowed the freedom to realize their fullest potential as human beings. Life is, of course, necessary to partake in that freedom. Where my personal opinion usually meets with disagreement is that I also believe an unborn child to be just as much a person as as you or me and deserving of that same humane treatment.

 

As an example, I do not believe that the citizen jury system which, under current law, allows for the death penalty is tyrannical. A state should not have that kind of power unto itself and, in our republic, rightly does not. The government leaves that power to a jury of the convicted criminal's peers. Where I go a step further is that I don't believe that the jury, comprised of fellow citizens, should hold that power either. Noone should be permitted to hold the power of life and death over another.

I apologize for adding what was probably an uncessary sentence at the very end. The abortion question does not fall within the "government power" referenced later. That particular practice, to my mind, falls squarely within Americans having the power to kill other Americans.

 

To phrase it differently, the final parenthetical interruptor was merely a blanket statement that I find the practice of allowing governments to have the power of life and death over its citizens is tyrannical. It had little to do with what was above it, other than that I view the first section (limitation on individual power to kill other citizens) as an extension of the broader concept of limitation on government power. I believe that ALL people should be allowed the freedom to realize their fullest potential as human beings. Life is, of course, necessary to partake in that freedom. Where my personal opinion usually meets with disagreement is that I also believe an unborn child to be just as much a person as as you or me and deserving of that same humane treatment.

 

As an example, I do not believe that the citizen jury system which, under current law, allows for the death penalty is tyrannical. A state should not have that kind of power unto itself and, in our republic, rightly does not. The government leaves that power to a jury of the convicted criminal's peers. Where I go a step further is that I don't believe that the jury, comprised of fellow citizens, should hold that power either. Noone should be permitted to hold the power of life and death over another.

Thanks for clearing that up. Excellent post...but to me this is for another thread, I'm not interested in debating whether abortion is right or wrong as I've done that a million times.

^ Agreed. And so as I said in my first post, is it possible that legalized abortion has been a factor in reducing the crime rate nationally? I suppose it could be, but without better controls on the system, it's difficult to say "Yes, there's one of the things that did it."

^ Agreed. And so as I said in my first post, is it possible that legalized abortion has been a factor in reducing the crime rate nationally? I suppose it could be, but without better controls on the system, it's difficult to say "Yes, there's one of the things that did it."

What controls could be implemented to have a more exact answer?

What controls could be implemented to have a more exact answer?

 

Well, since "the system" we're talking about here is nothing less than the population of those countries that have legalized abortion, controls will be tough to come by. I think there is simply too much going on to be able to pinpoint one specific thing. I'd also like to see a few crime numbers, year by year, from 1973 to now. In any case, the variety of economic, cultural and crime trending patters that would seem to come into play when determining rises and falls in crime rate would be pretty substantial and tough to sift through when it comes down to it. It's an interesting theory, but not one I'm certain there is a good way to verify.

Well, since "the system" we're talking about here is nothing less than the population of those countries that have legalized abortion, controls will be tough to come by. I think there is simply too much going on to be able to pinpoint one specific thing. I'd also like to see a few crime numbers, year by year, from 1973 to now. In any case, the variety of economic, cultural and crime trending patters that would seem to come into play when determining rises and falls in crime rate would be pretty substantial and tough to sift through when it comes down to it. It's an interesting theory, but not one I'm certain there is a good way to verify.

This is quite long and I'm not for sure if it's the exact same as the Freakonomics text but from a quick perusing it seems to be pretty much the same.

Probably, but so would killing the poor or minorities. This is not to say that the poor or minorities commit or don't commit more crime, but that they are prosecuted more for it, which is what affects the crime rate.

Preposterous notion. If that's the case, let's get down to the nitty gritty. If the prison population is mostly black, should we get fine tuned and promote black abortions? If those in prison that have committed white collar crime come mostly from white accountants, should we then promote the abortion of babies that would be born to white accountants?

 

Simply retarded notion IMO.

To me when you go to the notion of killing a certain group you miss the points. I have linked something close to the original text above...but found a blog where the author addresses this particular notion.

 

Some highlights:

 

As the author illustrates much better than I can...race isn't a part of the theory or maybe even in crime rates at all.

2) Race is not an important part of the abortion-crime argument that John Donohue and I have made in academic papers and that Dubner and I discuss in Freakonomics. It is true that, on average, crime involvement in the U.S. is higher among blacks than whites. Importantly, however, once you control for income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is, the importance of race disappears for all crimes except homicide. (The homicide gap is partly explained by crack markets). In other words, for most crimes a white person and a black person who grow up next door to each other with similar incomes and the same family structure would be predicted to have the same crime involvement. Empirically, what matters is the fact that abortions are disproportionately used on unwanted pregnancies, and disproportionately by teenage women and single women.

 

When abortions occur they aren't as much preventing someone from ever having a pregnancy...but that particular one (a key distinction)

 

4) When a woman gets an abortion, for the most part it is not changing the total number of children she has; rather, it is shifting the timing so those births come later in life. This is an important fact to remember. One in four pregnancies ends in abortion and this has been true for 30 years in the U.S. But the impact of abortion on the overall birth rate has been quite small.

 

5) In light of point (4) above, it is hard to even know what Bennett means when he says “you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Implicit in his comment is the idea that some external force, like a government, is forcing blacks to have abortions. This is obviously a completely different situation than abortion as we know it today, in which a woman chooses whether or not to have an abortion now, and then starts her family later in life, when her situation is more stable and conducive. The distinction between a woman choosing to control her fertility and the government choosing to limit her fertility is fundamental and people often seem to lose sight of that.