Abortion is Not the Reason for Lower Crime Rates Essay

Abortion has been one of the most popular and argumentative topics that has still yet to be settled. Ultimately the question we can ask when trying to solve this issue is whether or not pregnant women should have the right to kill an unborn baby. Abortion is the ending of a pregnancy before birth takes place and is a moral wrong. Can we as a society call ourselves human if we allow the deaths of unborn babies to take place? Those who take the side of pro-choice or as also known as pro-abortion often use statements concerning life, humanity, human rights and freedom to support their claims. I believe abortion should be illegal because we as a society must protect the human lives that are in danger whether or not they are in their first

Swift’s plan is an ironic attempt to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method"(503), for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth” (503). His “solution” is to sell a child, after he or she reaches one year of age. “Instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding and partly to the clothing of many thousands”(503). From Swift’s perspective using the children, as food is the most efficient and cheap way to make the children a contribution rather than a burden.

Like the other numerous number of circulating pamphlets, Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ begins with a sympathetic description of poor Irish people who can’t afford raising their kids to give one a sense of sympathy towards them. Unlike the other pamphlets of his contemporaries which proposed remedies or just complained about the problem like how the British government did, he emphasizes that his proposal “…is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are

In the past thirty years, the incarceration of women has risen exponentially. Poverty, lack of access to education, abuse, addiction, mental health and parenting issues all impact women’s criminality and health before, during and after they are incarcerated (Hannaher, K., 2007). By 2010 there were nearly 206,000 women currently serving time in the criminal justice system. As the years go by, the numbers are constantly increasing (Women Behind Bars, 2015). The number of pregnant women incarcerated has also been on the rise. Most incarcerated women do not receive proper prenatal care before entering the criminal justice system. Because these women are from mostly poverty neighborhoods, they are more likely to endure domestic violence, poor

Advocates of criminalization also stressed society’s obligation to halt the declining birthrate among white Americans. And many stressed the need to protect the sanctity of motherhood and the chastity of white women; abortion, after all, supported the separation of sexual intercourse from reproduction (Solinger, 2015, pg. 5).

The acceptance and practice of abortions has greatly increased in America, with nearly 53 million legal abortions being performed from 1973 to 2011. To put this into perspective, that’s nearly 77 times the number of homicides and nonnegligent manslaughters from 1972 to 2007. ("Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics”). As of abortion rates in 2008, three in ten American women will have an abortion before the age of 45 (“Abortion ProCon.org”). Abortion has especially grown in acceptance among the younger generation, with 75% of women who have abortions being under the age of 30. Another shocking fact about abortion is that 9.3% of women who had abortions in 2011 had already had three or more abortions previously. In fact, a child is killed by an abortion in America every 26 seconds (“Online For Life”). While abortions can be dangerous for the mother, the mortality rate is only about 0.6 out of 100,000, which is about fourteen times smaller than the mortality rate of childbirth. So what do activists have to say about abortion?

One of the main reasons behind the drop in crime rates was the legalization of birth control laws. When children are born without a mother, a caring family, and a decent place to live in, their chances of becoming a criminal increase due to the lack of love and care during their early childhood years. Levitt and Dubner stated that “Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crimes; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime” (Levitt, 139). In order to test this theory to prove whether or not legalizing abortion would decrease the crime rates, some states had to act as early-legalizing states that supported the legalization of abortion. “Between 1988 and 1994, violent crime in the early-legalizing states fell 13 percent compared to the other states; between 1994 and 1997, their murder rates fell 23 percent more than those of other states” (Levitt, 140). Once the few early-legalizing states took action and legalized abortion laws, the crime rates began to plummet. From my perspective, because of Levitt and Dubner’s extensive use of facts and statistics to support the reasoning behind the disappearance of criminals, they were able to

In chapter four of Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner discuss the downturn of criminal activity in the United States. They begin the chapter by giving a summary of Romania’s abortion law, and then they switch to the history of criminal activity in the U.S. At the end, they also make sure to connect the ideas while including clear explanations of their perspectives (Levitt and Dubner 105-132). The way they examine some of the most impactful components that decreased felonies in the U.S., such as dependency on prisons and police strategies/quantity, is done in an effective way for the reader to understand.

When it comes to sensitive topics, there are few that draw on people’s emotions as much as abortion. Why it this so? It is the nature of the topic. Abortion is a topic in which people’s views are just as diverse as the population itself. Most people avoid writing about such topics altogether, especially when they are in support of such an act. However when economist Steven D. Levitt and writer Stephen J Dubner wrote chapter 4 of “Freakonomics” titled “Where have all the Criminals Gone?” they did just that. The chapter details historical examples of bans on abortion, possible reasons for the sharp decline in crime in the US, and a strong final argument for why abortion is the reason the crime rate dropped so suddenly. The emotionally

Tietze used New York City as a basis for his study and the data he used was based off of estimates for the first two years after abortion was legalized (Tietze, 1975). “According to the author’s estimate, about 70 percent of the legal abortions (50,000 per year) obtained by New York City residents during the first two years under the new law replaced illegal procedures” (Tietze, 1975, p. 123). The estimate implies that the total number of induced abortions, legal and illegal, increased about 40 percent (Tietze, 1975). The number of live births in New York City declined by 25 percent and, Tietze’s (1975) study estimated the increased number of legal abortions were responsible for about half of the decline in births.

This theory exemplifies the law of diminishing returns, as the original shock impact of lack of children is reduced as the effect becomes more and more normalized, and abortion decreases its own consumer base as time passes. Looking at the number of abortions since Roe, it quickly becomes evident that there is a definite decline in the rate of abortions before there is a decline in the number of abortions, because although abortion rates decrease over time for a variety of factors (including institutionalized push-back and anti-abortion propaganda), the rising population up until Roe offsets what otherwise would have been a decrease in abortion numbers[Fig 4.1.1].

In the United States women have the option to put their baby up for adoption or get an abortion While adoption has some financial benefits, (statistic) because they fear the social ramifications of carrying a pregnancy to term. In South Carolina women seeking abortion often face counseling to discourage the woman from getting an abortion. However women in North Carolina are given easier accessibility to abortion services. To improve life for women in South Carolina, abortion laws should be molded to be similar to North Carolina’s because they will give women a chance to rethink their decision, they’re cheaper, and because they will allow all women to have a choice whether or not to abort-- women will no longer need to fit certain specifications in order to go through with their decision.

This piece written by Swift may be satirical and a horrendous idea to the common people, it would fix the problems that Dublin is having. By selling off their newborns, which they can’t afford anyway, they can make quite a bit of profit, helping with the poverty problem. Soon, they won’t have to worry about the little thieves running around because all of the children that have been stealing will have grown up and there won’t be any new children coming into the business. Lastly, with the new generation being butchered and devoured, there would be a rapid decrease in the

Just because a woman acted foolishly and carelessly does not mean that an innocent third party, the child, should have to accept the punishment for their mother’s actions. Another alarming statistic is that twenty-two percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion (U.S. Abortion Statistics). Many of these abortions occur from people who live below the poverty level and cannot afford proper birth control. While abortion has been decreasing among most groups of categories that are determined by characteristics such as age, race, and financial income; abortions among poor people have been on the rise. In 2008, poor women were responsible for forty-two percent of all abortions that took place in the United States. Likewise, the abortion rate of poor women escalated by eight-teen percent from 2000-2008 (Wind). This problem can be solved by providing more heath care clinics through the country for those individuals who cannot afford birth control. With more available heath care clinics, the amount of abortions that occur will be diminished significantly and wrongful killing of unborn children will come to an end.

“If we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other? Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, rather, to use violence to get what they want” -- Mother Theresa