Crime, Abortion and Birth Control

September 22nd, 2005 | by Craig |

This is a very thought-provoking column from Orson Scott Card.

Try to set aside your personal opinions about abortion and let’s look at history.

In 1973, Roe v. Wade made abortion permissible throughout the United States. The floodgates opened, and vast numbers of abortions were performed. As a result, vast numbers of children were not born.

Ah, but which children? The vast majority of the abortions were among women who would have been raising their children without a father; substantial numbers of these women were addicts. And even the abortions performed on middle-class women were somewhat more likely to be the result of liaisons in which one partner or the other, or both, had poor impulse control.

In other words, the fetuses that were aborted, had they been born, would have become children who were statistically the most likely group to become criminals. Raised by single mothers, in poverty, with genes that might not provide them with much ability to foresee the long-term consequences of impulsive actions.

I forgot where I found this, so if it was you, please let me know.

  1. 13 Responses to “Crime, Abortion and Birth Control”

  2. By Aaron Weissman on Sep 22, 2005 | Reply

    I originally read about this in a (fascinating) book called Freakanomics by Steven Levitt. Levitt, an economist, provides some pretty interesting (and convincing) statistics behind that conclusion.

  3. By Gman on Sep 22, 2005 | Reply

    What’s your point, Craig?

    Are you suggesting that abortion is an acceptable means as long as the end is desirable? There is a flip side to Card’s theory: of the 40 million plus babies that have been aborted since 1973, how many of them might have been perfectly normal people? (I hesitate to ask how many might have been presidents, scientists, or businessman because, quite frankly, the president is just as valuable, in God’s eyes, as the next guy.) Even so, what if they were born into, for example, poverty or crime? Is poverty and crime a final sentence for everyone? Who are we to even guess at the destiny of another human being? That’s the ultimate hubris!

    By your silence, you seem to at least tacitly agree with Card.

  4. By The Raving Norseman on Sep 22, 2005 | Reply

    Another side of this argument is brought up by some conservative pundits who call it the Roe Effect; in essence, they claim that one of the reasons the Democratic Party is in such disarray these days is that millions of people who would have voted their way don’t exist. I don’t know what kind of water that holds, but it’s an interesting thought.

  5. By Paul Krueger on Sep 22, 2005 | Reply

    See: John 1:41-42..when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit she cried out in a loud voice and said “Most blessed are you among women and blessed is the
    fruit of your womb”……. Enough Americans have the
    Faith to believe this Theology to not relegate innocent
    lives to little more than “Crime Stoppers”! Carp.

  6. By Craig on Sep 22, 2005 | Reply

    Gman–
    I’ve long been pro-life and always will be.

    Your reply suggests that you haven’t read Card’s piece through to the end.

    We had two systems for controlling the birth rate of children most likely to become criminals.

    The one we’re using now consists of letting their parents kill them after conception.

    The other involved using social pressure, stories and incentives to keep them from letting the children be conceived in the first place.

    What was the great evil of the old system? People’s sexual drives were “repressed.” This was the great crime of the 1950s – people were so “repressed.”

    But no one has yet demonstrated a single ill effect from “repression.” For the simple reason that the other names for “repression” are words like “conscience” and “responsibility” and “impulse control.” The virtues we link with adulthood.

    We expected people to control themselves, and we kept them from having the freedom to act on their impulses until they had learned how to control them.

    Compare this with the method we use today: Letting mothers have someone kill their babies for them. What we used to do with words and customs, now we do in blood. With eugenics.

  7. By Gman on Sep 23, 2005 | Reply

    I jumped the gun, Craig. I only skimmed through the Card piece and should have read it more closely. I remember you indicating that your are pro-life, so I guess I was looking for you to confirm it. Mea culpa.

  8. By Craig on Sep 23, 2005 | Reply

    :)

  9. By Craig's Spousal Unit on Sep 23, 2005 | Reply

    Don’t worry, Gman. I got on his case about the article too, and then he asked me if I read the link. He’s being his sneaky self. ;*D

  10. By bleedingbrain on Sep 24, 2005 | Reply

    ‘Abortion as crime control’ has long been touted as one of the greatest redeeming qualities of the practice.

    I suspect that the loss of generations will come to be seen as the destructive force that it is.

    When populations are hollowed out by abortion, crime becomes a minor problem compared to population implosion.

    The problem of a stolen TV does not hold a candle to the problem of underpopulation.

  11. By Rae on Sep 25, 2005 | Reply

    Not true. The vast amount of women (and this is statically proven) that get abortions are white, middle-to-upper-middle-class, women between the ages of 18-26.

    Theortical reaching if you ask me.

    I prefer the theory that all those aborted could’ve been earning and producing to support Social Security and the economy.

  12. By Levi on Sep 25, 2005 | Reply


    Freakonomics     by Steven Levitt, has a very interesting and in-depth chapter about this exact issue and the economic implications of it. Check it out :).

  13. By Gman on Sep 26, 2005 | Reply

    Thanks for backup, CSU! Mucho gracias!!!

    Rae, your thought is interesting, but aren’t you getting into the same thinking pattern: human beings are a means to an end?

    Human beings, I believe, have inherent dignity and value by virtue of the fact that they are created in God’s image (Imago Dei). This truth goes a long way in combatting the tendency of civilizations to use their people as pawns in a grand scheme — i.e. utopian illusions like communism, Nazism, even nationalism.

    Again, I simply can’t believe one would use the argument that abortion has the eugenic effect of reducing crime. Whoever espouses that idea is committing the ultimate hubris and is really trying to play God. Whenever man tries to play God, only greater evil and disaster ensues…

  14. By Matt Singer on Sep 26, 2005 | Reply

    This piece and Freakonomics are both interesting. There’s a noticeable difference between the Roe theorists and Orson Scott Card’s musings.

    What would that be?

    Oh, that would be the data that the economists used.

    So, what’s that about facts?

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