Abortion and Crime

A revolutionary perspective drew a very interesting connection between the sudden reduction of crime in 1990 and the permission of abortion in 1973. The book explains that poor males aborted by poor mothers in 1973 never grew up to be street corner, gun-totting drug dealers. Thus, in 1990 crime rates plummeted. The author also notes that a smaller influene upon the reduction of crime beginning around 1990 was stricter and longer jail sentences. But the author contends that Abortion is a much more significant reason. What do you think. Consider 1973 + 18 is 1991. And young males usually begin their criminal tendencies around the age of 16 with their first drug sales, and their first violent incidents. It does seem, that right now, the reason that you are not being burglarised as you sit in your home is because either the criminal was aborted somewhere between 1973 and now or he was put in jail for such a long sentence that he's not able to get to you.

I'm not sure what to make of your poll, there; it makes practical sense that the fewer children a woman has, the more of her resources she can devote to each, and that this is particularly pertinent to women in the lower socioeconomic demographics, whose resources are limited to begin with and can be spread too thin by multiple offspring, resulting in children whose needs are not consistently met.

I’ve heard this from a lot of different people, and quite frankly it makes sense.
The more abortions that women in big cities have, the less crime there will be due to the less amount of poverty ridden children that usually end up committing crimes. They don't even need a study to conclude this...

I think what Christian organizations should be focusing on more is birth control and trying to help people understand that it’s better to accept responsibility and to put effort into properly raising your child.
Because quite frankly the desperate and ridiculous little marches down D.C. streets with pictures of aborted fetuses is just making them look more desperate and stupid due to the lack of argument they have other than “JESUS HATES THIS!”

Obama08 said:

I’ve heard this from a lot of different people, and quite frankly it makes sense.
The more abortions that women in big cities have, the less crime there will be due to the less amount of poverty ridden children that usually end up committing crimes. They don't even need a study to conclude this...

I think what Christian organizations should be focusing on more is birth control and trying to help people understand that it’s better to accept responsibility and to put effort into properly raising your child.
Because quite frankly the desperate and ridiculous little marches down D.C. streets with pictures of aborted fetuses is just making them look more desperate and stupid due to the lack of argument they have other than “JESUS HATES THIS!”

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Absolutely. I admit I am a little biased on this subject, but the conclusions of these studies comport with intuition. In the poll, one of the choices is to credit longer sentences. I have never believed that jails are the answer to crime. The number of people a society has incarcerated is a description of the extent of the society's failure to manage the causes of crime. Something happened in our society that changed the causes of crime. The best explanation so far is the legalization of abortion.

However, I was told recently that crime is again on the rise. I have not looked into it, myself. It is something I intend to do, and I may find that my intuition does not stand up to scrutiny.

Unfortunately, the other thread on this topic in the poll section degenerated into name calling and insults and was locked. I had posted a response in that thread that I thought was helpful to the debate. Here it is again. I would be interested in hearing any responses.

There was a very interesting article in the February 2004 issue of Scientific American that addressed the crime drop in the mid-90’s. You have to buy the article if you don’t subscribe, so here’s the gist:

While adult homicide declined starting in the 1980’s, youth crime (meaning adolescents) experienced a dramatic increase in the 80’s until around 1993 and then there was a dramatic drop. This pattern was largely confined to one demographic: young black males. This rise in crime was almost exclusively in the form of gun-related crimes. There was actually a drop in non-gun related crime during the 1980’s.

Now, if abortion were the cause of this crime decline, you would expect that the population of the group that was responsible for the vast majority of the crime would decrease. In fact, the number of young black males in the population has been unchanged (relative to the population) and actually decreased when the crime epidemic started in the 1980’s. In addition legalization of abortion in the early 1970’s should have resulted in decreased youth crime earlier than it was actually seen. The rate of youth crime (defined as crime by those age 14-24 in this article) should have started in the mid to late 1980's. Instead, the youth crime decrease didn't start until 1994.

There is however a decrease that corresponded temporally and demographically with the drop in crime rates better than the legalization of abortion. That is, the flame out of the crack epidemic. This accelerated in the 1980’s and then peaked in the early 1990’s when crack use then declined significantly. Crack was primarily a drug of the inner city and affected more blacks than other races, and it corresponds with the fact that the crime decline was exclusively related to gun related crimes (as crack dealers do not typically use knives to settle their scores).

The article goes on to analyze the longer decrease in adult crime drop that started in the 1980’s, analyzing the role of domestic shelters, gun laws, and increased incarcerations. But with regards to this thread, I think the article makes an interesting argument that abortion is not the primary reason for the crime drop and that the cycle of the crack epidemic played a much larger role.

Cremaster77 said:

There is however a decrease that corresponded temporally and demographically with the drop in crime rates better than the legalization of abortion. That is, the flame out of the crack epidemic. This accelerated in the 1980’s and then peaked in the early 1990’s when crack use then declined significantly. Crack was primarily a drug of the inner city and affected more blacks than other races, and it corresponds with the fact that the crime decline was exclusively related to gun related crimes (as crack dealers do not typically use knives to settle their scores).

The article goes on to analyze the longer decrease in adult crime drop that started in the 1980’s, analyzing the role of domestic shelters, gun laws, and increased incarcerations. But with regards to this thread, I think the article makes an interesting argument that abortion is not the primary reason for the crime drop and that the cycle of the crack epidemic played a much larger role.

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Thank you, Cremaster for this great summarization of the analysis. There are other problems with the theme that abortions are responsible for the reduction in crime. I was researching the topic, but my computer crashed, and now I have to do it all over again. One of the most common articles I found stated that the authors, of the study that said that abortions were responsible, have admitted that they made errors.

However, I was told recently that crime is again on the rise. I have not looked into it, myself. It is something I intend to do, and I may find that my intuition does not stand up to scrutiny

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Crime is on the rise again and curiously the numbers of abortions have drastically decreased.

Yes, it reduced the number of illegal abortions.