The fourth chapter within the book “Freakonomics” continues a little bit of what the book was talking about earlier. It starts off by giving us a little bit of background history about Romania during communist rule. The leader of the country at the time was Nicolae Ceausescu. He was a tyrannical leader that ruled his country through fear. One of the more interesting things he instated when he came to power was the banning of abortion, and all sex education and contraceptives. This would have far reaching consequences for him later on because it would cause the population to surge. When the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989 the increased population came out to protest against him. Him and his family were eventually caught given a swift trial, and executed by firing squad. This will end up tying into the chapter later.
The chapter then takes a swift turn towards the American crime rate, and how it rose from the 1960’s up until the early 1990’s when it fell sharply. The book explains that several factors may be at work behind the lowering crime rate. These factors include: better economy, innovative police strategies, reliance on prisons, changes in drug markets, aging population, tougher gun laws, increased police forces, and other strategies such as death penalty and gun buybacks etc. So these factors were discussed by the book. It is explained that every single one of these factors had contributed in small ways to the drop in crime. These factors were explained to have correlation and effect on the decreasing crime rate. Although minimal at best and sometimes almost negligible the factors that have been proven to take the crime rate down.
While the aforementioned factors are somewhat relevant, the true culprit for what brought down the crime rate would surprise us. The legalization of abortion in the United States had a lot to do with the dropping crime rate in the early 1990’s. The book points to the Romanian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu to find explanation of this phenomenon. According to the Romanian data, children that were born after the abortion ban were more likely to become criminals. This was due to the fact that the children were not raised with care and love. A mother who does not fully love her child may neglect it physically and emotionally. This leaves the child more susceptible to becoming a criminal in society later on. The same could be applied to the legalization of abortion in the United States.
Since abortion has been legalized, the females who have felt that their children would not receive the love and attention from them have gotten abortions. “Two factors in particular, childhood poverty and a single parent household are among the strongest predictors a child will have a criminal future.(Freakonomics,pg138).” After examining the major contributor of the crime rate drop of the early 1990’s we visit the possibly uncomfortable act of trying to place on a fetus. The book starts off by using the value system put in place for body parts in dangerous jobs. It outlines which body parts are most likely more useful and hence more valued. In the case of the fetus the book uses an objective third party view point in which the individual agrees with neither side. “This individual does not believe that a fetus is the 1:1 equivalent of a newborn, yet neither does he believe that a fetus has no relative value. (Freakonomics,pg144).” He assigns a value of 100 fetuses to 1 newborn child, this value is arbitrary within the context of the book but it illustrates the point that using abortion to control the crime rate in inefficient, because it creates more “murders” than it can stop. This value is completely arbitrary as I said before and may not reflect the majority of viewpoints on what value a fetus versus a newborn child has. One thing has been proven though by legalizing abortion, which is the confidence of the mother to assess what life their child would have based on the resources of the mother at hand.
Work Cited
Levitt D. Steven, Dubner J. Stephen. “Freakonomics”. 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022: HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2005, Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment