Rudy Giuliani loves to give the impression that he is tough on crime and that he is responsible for the decrease in crime in New York City while he was mayor. Well, it’s possible that some of the cosmetic changes he made to the city reduced crime a little bit! But I think this is the best explanation, and I only bring it up because I’m not sure if you all have heard it before**
The theoretical justification for our argument rests on two simple assumptions: 1) Legalized abortion leads to fewer “unwanted” babies being born, and 2) unwanted babies are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect and are therefore at an increased risk for criminal involvement later in life. The first assumption, that abortion reduces the number of unwanted children, is true virtually by definition. The second assumption, that unwanted children are at increased risk for criminal involvement, is supported by three decades of academic research. If one accepts these two assumptions, then a direct mechanism by which the legalization of abortion can reduce crime has been established. At that point, the question merely becomes: Is the magnitude of the impact large or small?
Our preliminary research suggests that the effect of abortion legalization is large.
Read it all if you haven’t before. For those of you who have read Freakonomics, this is old news, of course. But I wish someone would bring this up. It’s be political suicide, but it would be funny and it’d be a lot of fun to watch the Righties squirm- and maybe the Dems, too!! After all, abortion has caused a glut of lettuce pickers, dontcha know.
**So far, I have to say that I don’t think there is anything that the collective hive here hasn’t heard before, but you never know! I filed this under “Politics” because there was no “John Cole Loves Abortion” category.