New Crime-Fighting Superhero: The Abortionist

[acropolis]

I guess maybe this is 'old'

but I think it's worth mentioning.

In a nutshell: an economist published a paper that found that much of the decrease in crime in the 1990's was due to the legalization of abortion (i.e., Roe vs. Wade) in 1973.

Supposedly, women who don't want their kids are most likely to have kids that grow and kill people etc. due to their unwantedness. If it's legal to abort them, they never happen and they never commit crime.

Also found was that the crack epidemic was ending and their were more police officers.

Anyway, article about the economist is here but since you are all too lazy too sign up on nyt i'll quote significant chunks.

Then there is his coming ''Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990's: Four Factors That Explain the Decline and Seven That Do Not.'' The entire drop in crime, Levitt says, was due to more police officers, more prisoners, the waning crack epidemic and Roe v. Wade.

One factor that probably didn't make a difference, he argues, was the innovative policing strategy trumpeted in New York by Rudolph Giuliani and William Bratton.

''I think,'' Levitt says, ''I'm pretty much alone in saying that.''

In the abortion paper, published in 2001, he and Donohue warned that their findings should not be seen ''as either an endorsement of abortion or a call for intervention by the state in the fertility decisions of women.'' They suggested that crime might just as easily be curbed by ''providing better environments for those children at greatest risk for future crime.''

Still, the very topic managed to offend nearly everyone. Conservatives were enraged that abortion could be construed as a crime-fighting tool. Liberals were aghast that poor and black women were singled out. Economists grumbled that Levitt's methodology was not sound. A syllogism, after all, can be a magic trick: All cats die; Socrates died; therefore Socrates was a cat.

''I think he's enormously clever in so many areas, focusing very much on the issue of reverse causality,'' says Ted Joyce, an economist at Baruch College who has written a critical response to the abortion paper. ''But in this case I think he ignored it, or didn't tend to it well enough.''

As the news media gorged on the abortion-crime story, Levitt came under direct assault. He was called an ideologue (by conservatives and liberals alike), a eugenicist, a racist and downright evil.

(in it's entirety the article is seven pages long, and interesting)

[Mirai]

You seriously need a life man.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally posted by acropolis
I guess maybe this is 'old'

Yeah, I remember reading something about it a few years ago now. But it's pretty interesting though.

One thing I'd be interested in seeing is a good estimate on how many people less would be born if abortion was legal (or birth control encouraged, whatever). This seems rather difficult to measure - the amount of abortions might bear no relation to the potential amount of births a woman would have in a non-abortionist scenario.

Anyway, during the period covered you also had the Great Society type reforms, it's possible that they had an effect. Casaulity in these things is dodgy, as stated.

[acropolis]

Originally posted by Mirai
You seriously need a life man.

?

I'm at work.

And I haven't posted since Thursday.

And now I'm at work and confused.

Originally posted by Dante Hicks
Yeah, I remember reading something about it a few years ago now. But it's pretty interesting though.

One thing I'd be interested in seeing is a good estimate on how many people less would be born if abortion was legal (or birth control encouraged, whatever). This seems rather difficult to measure - the amount of abortions might bear no relation to the potential amount of births a woman would have in a non-abortionist scenario.

Anyway, during the period covered you also had the Great Society type reforms, it's possible that they had an effect. Casaulity in these things is dodgy, as stated.

"If abortion was legal"? I've no clue about UK abortion laws. It's all clear here.

Seems to me legalization targets well, because low-income are the least likely to be able to travel to some other state/country to get the operation twere it illegal at their home locale.

But the article was mostly about how to ferret out causality from statistics. And while killing kids to fight crime is entertaining, the ways to control the statistics were the most interesting to me.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally posted by acropolis
I've no clue about UK abortion laws. It's all clear here.

What I meant was, how many less children weren't born as a result of Roe vs Wade or whatever other decision. It doesn't seem very clear cut.

There was a story recently about how South East London (where I live) was the sexually-transmitted-disease capital of the UK. To comment on the amount of unprotected sex they highlighted one girl's case who had had eight pregnancies by the age of 16 - 2 kids, 2 miscarriages and 4 abortions (or something similar). It doesn't seem particularly clear cut that she would have had 6 kids by 16 if abortion was illegal.

[Phang]

All cats die; Socrates died; therefore Socrates was a cat.

heh.

[Tactitus]

Originally posted by Dante Hicks
One thing I'd be interested in seeing is a good estimate on how many people less would be born if abortion was legal (or birth control encouraged, whatever). This seems rather difficult to measure - the amount of abortions might bear no relation to the potential amount of births a woman would have in a non-abortionist scenario.

I'm not sure the absolute numbers are particularly relevant, but most of the estimates I've seen have been between 40 and 45 million abortions in the US in the 30 years since Roe v. Wade legalized them nationally. Not surprisingly, the anti-abortionists tend to have higher numbers than the pro-abortionists.

Of course, a number of those were for purely medical reasons (baby was severly deformed and would have died anyway or mother's life at risk) where the baby being unwanted would not have led to a life of crime. And you have to consider that there were between 100K and 1M illegal abortions being performed per year before then (no one knows for sure since, of course, they were illegal).

Anyway, during the period covered you also had the Great Society type reforms, it's possible that they had an effect. Casaulity in these things is dodgy, as stated.

If one were interested (I'm not), it occurs to me that one might look at different countries to see if a similar pattern of reduced crime rates begins 17-odd years after abortions are legalized. That might highlight or eliminate other programs as a possible explanation.

[Kurashima]

Paging JonnyBGoof , Nobrot and MrLJunkieri to thread #274845 for a debate on Casuality.