craigfarmer
Member
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2004
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Sometimes the facts are simply, inconvenient. However, Newliberals have a dedication to accepting whatever is found to be true, and dealing with the consequences. Here, John Tierny discusses a theory based on statistics that suggests New York state's abortion rate in the 1970's helped lower the crime rate two decades later:
Can abortion lead to lower crime?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16tierney.html?hp&oref=login
Of course life is complicated and any phenomenon has many components, but it is logical that abortions by people who clearly didn't want to be parents, lessened the burden 15-25 years later on our criminal justice system. It has become commonplace to note the correlations between single parenthood, under-education, poverty, drug use, etc. and increased propensity toward crime; Well now we may very well have found a perverse benefit to the sad choice of abortion. It would be absurd to assume that had thousands of women chosen to "keep their babies" in the seventies, they would have transitioned from wanted to "kill them" to "loving them and helping their child get the best chance out of life". It is more reasonable to accept that we would have had more people with huge problems inflicting themselves on society. The question is whether these people who never made it out of the womb contributed to a large drop in crime, or were just statistical noise. My thought is that the theory has validity.
I have always supported abortion rights as a least worst choice that was a necessary option in order to maintain the concept of freedom for over half our population. A part of my calculation was that once a woman didn't want to be pregnant but somehow was "forced" to be; there would be violence no matter what happened after that. She would transfer that anger in one way or another onto or through the child. In order to rid ourselves of the violence associated with abortion, we have to change people's hearts so that every pregnancy is welcomed as a gift from God. This not being reality today, we need to comprehend that the impulse to abort just won't disappear because we change the law or even if the woman volunteers to "have it".
We might use these findings as a sympton of a deeper spiritual problem that needs to be addressed within the human condition. How can we deal with the turmoil of life, and make better choices so violence is not so prevalent in various ways.
I fear most reaction to this topic will be based on underlying positions about abortion, approaches to crime, and political affiliation. It most likely will suffer the fate of other controversial studies such as those on race, and guns. We should lead an honest intellectual movement that is willing to make moral judgements and public policy based on the best science.
This must include a willingness to accept unpopular facts.
Craig Farmer
https://newliberals.org
making the word "liberal" safe again!
Can abortion lead to lower crime?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16tierney.html?hp&oref=login
Of course life is complicated and any phenomenon has many components, but it is logical that abortions by people who clearly didn't want to be parents, lessened the burden 15-25 years later on our criminal justice system. It has become commonplace to note the correlations between single parenthood, under-education, poverty, drug use, etc. and increased propensity toward crime; Well now we may very well have found a perverse benefit to the sad choice of abortion. It would be absurd to assume that had thousands of women chosen to "keep their babies" in the seventies, they would have transitioned from wanted to "kill them" to "loving them and helping their child get the best chance out of life". It is more reasonable to accept that we would have had more people with huge problems inflicting themselves on society. The question is whether these people who never made it out of the womb contributed to a large drop in crime, or were just statistical noise. My thought is that the theory has validity.
I have always supported abortion rights as a least worst choice that was a necessary option in order to maintain the concept of freedom for over half our population. A part of my calculation was that once a woman didn't want to be pregnant but somehow was "forced" to be; there would be violence no matter what happened after that. She would transfer that anger in one way or another onto or through the child. In order to rid ourselves of the violence associated with abortion, we have to change people's hearts so that every pregnancy is welcomed as a gift from God. This not being reality today, we need to comprehend that the impulse to abort just won't disappear because we change the law or even if the woman volunteers to "have it".
We might use these findings as a sympton of a deeper spiritual problem that needs to be addressed within the human condition. How can we deal with the turmoil of life, and make better choices so violence is not so prevalent in various ways.
I fear most reaction to this topic will be based on underlying positions about abortion, approaches to crime, and political affiliation. It most likely will suffer the fate of other controversial studies such as those on race, and guns. We should lead an honest intellectual movement that is willing to make moral judgements and public policy based on the best science.
This must include a willingness to accept unpopular facts.
Craig Farmer
https://newliberals.org
making the word "liberal" safe again!
