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Crime
- 4. “I am of the belief that the acceptance of birth control by society, and its frank teaching, can help diminish criminal activity!" ― Montgomery Mulford, The Birth Control Review, October 1931.
- 5. “Differential Fertility” “None of the colored races shows perceptible signs of declining birth rate, all tending to breed up to‑ the limits of available subsistence ... It can mean only one thing: A tremendous and steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus colored men from overcrowded colored homelands ...”
- 6. “Crossings with the negro are uniformly fatal. Whites, Amerindians, or Asiatics –– all are alike vanquished by the invincible prepotency of the more primitive, generalized, and lower negro blood. ... In ethnic crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood, once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again.” –– Lothrop Stoddard. The Rising Tide of Color Against White World- Supremacy (1922).
- 10. “Male criminals had an average of 4.9 children, criminal marriage, 4.4 children, parents of slow learners, 3.5 children, a German family 2.2 children, a marriage from the educated circles, 1.9 children.” ― Die Drohung des Untermenschen, 1937.
- 13. What They Promised “Legal abortion will decrease the number of unwanted children, battered children, child abuse cases, and possibly subsequent delinquency, drug addiction, and a host of social ills believed to be associated with neglectful parenthood.” NARAL, in 1974.―
- 14. What They Promised “To withhold the possibility of a safe and socially acceptable abortion for unmarried women is to start the chain of illegitimacy and despair that will continue to keep poverty, crime and poor mental health high on the list of pressing social problems.” ― Daniel Callahan in 1970.
- 15. “[Children of women denied an abortion] turned out to have been registered more often with psychiatric services, engaged in more antisocial and criminal behavior, and have been more dependent on public assistance.”
- 16. “When abortions are illegal, poor women deliver and keep their babies. Then they plunk them in front of a TV set, watch them get abused and conditioned to violence by parades of males, and expose them to all the factors the criminologists describe as the precursors to a life of crime. ... Making abortions freely available to the impoverished young women who produce our criminals is very likely the most important crime prevention measure‑ adopted in this country in the last 25 years.” ― Minneapolis Police Chief Anthony Bouza.
- 18. Percent of Each Race Wiped Out by Abortion Black 31% Hispanic 15% Asian/ Pacific Islander 15% White 11%
- 19. "Legalized abortion contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. ... Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime." ― John J. Donohue III and Stephen D. Levitt. "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime." Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2001.
- 20. “Unwanted children are often neglected and abused and this results in emotional infantile rage which is repressed but might eventually result in violence when directed outwards. The fact that due to the legalization of abortion fewer unwanted children are being born, and consequently there are fewer violent indiv- iduals with rage in their hearts, is obviously the main reason for the decrease in crime, especially violent crimes such as murder or rape.” ― Canadian abortionist Henry Morgentaler.
- 21. So … Let’s have a look at the statistics.
- 22. 1) Since aborted children are “unwanted,” they would likely have grown up in a home with parents that do not love them, so they would be more prone to crime. 2) Abortion culls certain demographic groups that are more prone to crime (usually African-Americans). The Two Main Assumptions
- 23. Decrease in American Crime Rates, 1991-2008 (since the 18th anniversary of Roe v. Wade) Murder 45%― Rape 31%― Robbery 47%― Aggravated assault 36%― Property crimes 37%―
- 27. The #1 Rule of a Good Economic or Scientific Study: Replicability. If it works in one place, it must work everywhere else in order to be valid. If the results of the study are not repeatable, it is merely hyping a coincidence.
- 28. 1962 Violent Crime Rates in Canada, 1962-2011 20111988
- 29. States with legal abortion (4) States with many exceptions (13)
- 30. Juvenile Violent Crime Arrest Rates, 1980-2009 (promised) 500 0
- 31. Juvenile Violent Crime Arrest Rates, 1980-2009 (actual) 500 0
- 32. Juvenile Violent Crime Arrest Rates, 1980-2009 (difference between promised and actual) 500 0
- 33. So Why Did Violent Crime Decrease Beginning in 1995? Reinstitution of the death penalty (1976) Increased arrest, conviction and incarceration rates “Broken windows” policing Longer prison sentences Increased concealed carry laws (currently 40 states) Stronger economy Waning of the crack epidemic Affirmative action policies in police departments Increase in the number of police officers in high-crime cities.
- 34. It appears that abortion actually increases the number of “unwanted children.” How is this possible? Comparative perceived risk.
- 35. When abortion is illegal … having sex outside of marriage carries a relatively high risk of “unwanted pregnancy.” When abortion is not available as a safety net, couples are much more careful, realizing that contraception often fails.
- 36. When abortion is legal … It is perceived as a “safety net.” As premarital sex becomes more and more common, it becomes more and more socially accepted, creating pressure on all women to engage in it. This includes women who would never have an abortion themselves.
- 37. Out-of-Wedlock Births in the USA, 1960-2012 1960 2012
- 38. Percentage of Children with Different Types of Problems by Marital Status of Parents Children who are “poorly engaged” in school 30% 31% 20% Children suspended Or expelled from school in the last year 23% 23% 10% Children who skipped school two or more times in the last year 14% 10% 6% Children in poor health 8% 8% 3% Single Cohabiting Married Parents Parents Parents
- 39. General Conclusion Even if abortion did reduce crime among one segment of the population by “culling” it, this effect is more than offset by the huge rise in crime that abortion indirectly causes by encouraging out-of-wedlock births. So ― do we attack the actual causes of crime ― or unborn babies?
- 40. As well as indirectly contributing to the massive increase in crime, abortion contributes in a smaller but more spectacular way directly to crime. Those involved in the abortion industry have a much higher rate of violent crime than any other segment of the medical profession.
- 41. Abortionist John Baxter Hamilton ― Wife Murderer
- 42. Abortionist Malachy DeHenre ― Wife Murderer
- 43. “Pro-Choice” Eric Henry Murdered Pro-Life Activist Pastor Anne Gordon
- 44. Abortionist Alicia Ruiz Hanna Murdered Abortion Client Angela Nieto Sanchez
- 45. Abortionist Brian Finkel Sexually Molested One Hundred of His Abortion Clients
- 46. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell Murdered Dozens of Newborn Babies
- 50. Other “Pro-Choice” Crimes Medical Crimes Assault and Battery Sex Crimes Hate Crimes Drug-Related Crimes Fraud-Related Crimes Property Crimes 3,435 1,121 2,540 91 408 681 863
Editor's Notes
- The title of this presentation is “Does Abortion Reduce Crime?” It was last updated in January of 2013. You can get many of the resources and backup references mentioned in this presentation from bclowes@hli.org. These include; 888 quotes from Margaret Sanger’s The Birth Control Review, by category; The full text of Lothrop Stoddard’s book The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (1922); The full text of Lothrop Stoddard’s book The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man (1922); Chapter 24 of The Facts of Life, a detailed history and description of “Eugenics;” and, of course, This PowerPoint presentation itself, which includes the complete transcript of this talk.
- In order to understand the debate over the link between abortion and crime, we have to spend a little time going over the history of eugenics.
- The idea that abortion reduces crime is rooted in the pseudo-science known as “eugenics,” defined as the self-direction of human evolution. There are three general types of eugenics: Positive eugenics — the preferential breeding of so-called "superior" individuals in order to improve the genetic stock of the human race. There have been very few practical examples of this type of eugenics, although Margaret Sanger, Lothrop Stoddard, and many others advocated for it in the early part of the Twentieth Century. One of these was the Lebensborn program of Nazi Germany, where carefully selected Aryan men and women were matched and produced supposedly genetically superior children. Negative eugenics — is the discouragement or legal prohibition of the reproduction of individuals carrying genes causing disease or disability. This can be achieved by genetic counseling or by voluntary or enforced sterilization. Since negative eugenics is much easier to implement than positive eugenics from a practical standpoint, there have been many examples of negative eugenics in the United States. The most noteworthy of these were the American sterilization laws in the first half of the Twentieth Century, which were praised by the German Nazi party. Under these laws, hundreds of thousands of mostly poor and Black women were sterilized against their wills or without any form of informed consent. One type of negative eugenics is the idea that those people who might bear children who are expected to have a high probability of being involved in criminal activity should be sterilized. Reverse eugenics — This is fortunately still rare, but is increasing, as moral standards relax more and more. It consists of the deliberate infliction of birth defects, such as deafness, on newborn children in order to make a social statement, with no regard whatsoever for the children’s welfare. There have been several cases of this type of negative eugenics in the United States, and it appears that it might grow more popular in the future. For example, Deaf Life Magazine says that deaf people aren’t disabled at all, they are just “different,” and calls people who disagree “oralist.” And some people who are very short in height argue that it is moral to insist that embryos be examined, then the ones who would grow into people of regular height should be destroyed, and the ones who would grow into dwarves should be implanted in a woman’s uterus and be allowed to grow. Cara Reynolds of Collingswood, New Jersey said that ‘You cannot tell me that I cannot have a child who's going to look like me. It's just unbelievably presumptuous and they're playing God” [Associated Press, January 21, 2007; described in Joseph A. D'Agostino. "Disturbing Trend: Designer Children Designed to be Disabled." LifeSite Daily News, April 2, 2007]. For an electronic copy of Chapter 24 of The Facts of Life, which a detailed exposition on eugenics, e-mail Brian Clowes at bclowes@hli.org.
- The first wave of eugenics in the United States began in about 1915, when dozens of books on eugenics crowded bookstore shelves, and Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Review frequently advocated both positive and negative eugenics. In fact, the masthead slogan of The Birth Control Review was “Birth Control: To Create a Race of Thoroughbreds.” The idea that we should restrain the breeding of so-called “criminal types” was championed by many in The Birth Control Review, including Montgomery Mulford, who wrote that “I am of the belief that the acceptance of birth control by society, and its frank teaching, can help diminish criminal activity!" in the October 1931 issue. Meanwhile, Marie Stopes of England published her journal Birth Control News, which had as its masthead a lantern that read “Birth Control,” and the slogan “Joyous and Deliberate Motherhood: A Sure Light in Our Racial Darkness.” Reference: Montgomery Mulford. "Birth Control Lessens Crime." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), page 293. For 888 quotes from Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Review, e-mail Brian Clowes at bclowes@hli.org.
- Harvard professor Lothrop Stoddard outlined the primary fear of eugenicists in his 1921 book The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy. He was worried about “differential fertility,” or the fact that Blacks were outbreeding Whites. He wrote that “None of the colored races shows perceptible signs of declining birth‑rate, all tending to breed up to the limits of available subsistence ... It can mean only one thing: A tremendous and steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus colored men from overcrowded colored homelands ... Crossings with the negro are uniformly fatal. Whites, Amerindians, or Asiatics ― all are alike vanquished by the invincible prepotency of the more primitive, generalized, and lower negro blood. ... In ethnic crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood, once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again.” Stoddard sat on the board of Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League for ten years after writing this book, and was one of her closest advisors. Of course, the American Birth Control League is now known as the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, whose abortion clinics are mostly located in minority neighborhoods. Reference: Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D. The Rising Tide of Color against White World‑Supremacy [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons], 1921. Reprinted in 1971 by Negro Universities Press, Westport, Connecticut, pages i, 8, 9, 90, 231, 298, 301, 302, 308, and 309 in the reprinted version [NOTE: Stoddard sat on the board of the American Birth Control League (later Planned Parenthood) in the 1930s, when Margaret Sanger headed it. Havelock Ellis, one of Sanger's lovers, enthusiastically endorsed Stoddard's book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World‑Supremacy in Sanger's magazine The Birth Control Review (Havelock Ellis. "The World's Racial Problems." Birth Control Review, October 1920, page 16). In this book (introduced by fellow racist/eugenicist Madison Grant), Stoddard demonstrates beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt the intimate connections between abortion, eugenics and goal‑oriented racism] (for the complete texts of Stoddard’s books The Rising Tide of Color against White World‑Supremacy and The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man, e-mail Brian Clowes at bclowes@hli.org. Not surprisingly, these books are still favorites on white power and racist Web sites today).
- Stoddard’s book The Rising Tide of Color against White World‑Supremacy showed typical racist stereotypes on its cover ― the spear-carrying African and knife- and sword-wielding Asians menacing White North America. The cover of his book The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man was even cruder; Black people are depicted as ugly and vicious monkeys throwing Molotov cocktails, and there is even a stereotypical bald, angry-looking hook-nosed Jew in the crowd.
- During the Great Depression, eugenics groups hired the unemployed (whether or not they could read) to hold picket signs supporting their cause. These signs had captions such as “I must drink alcohol to sustain life. Shall I transfer this craving to others?” and “I cannot read this sign. By what right have I children?”
- The influence of eugenics was felt far and wide as early as World War I. American immigration officials were taught to identify "high grade imbeciles," "low grade imbeciles," "low morons," "constitutional inferiors," "apathetics," "combatives," the "feeble‑minded," and alcoholics, just by glancing at their faces, in attempts to keep criminals and “undesirables” away from America’s shores. We have no idea how many thousands of hopeful and expectant people had their dreams crushed when they were turned away from our shores by such eugenic nonsense. Reference: Treasury Department, United States Public Health Service. "Miscellaneous Publication No. 18: Manual of the Mental Examination of Aliens" [Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office], 1918. These illustrations are on the Web site of the Dolan DNA Learning Center of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory at http://www.eugenicsarchive.org].
- Of course, the United States was not the only nation to violate its citizens' rights on a vast scale through enforced eugenic sterilization. Germany, England, Japan, Sweden, Finland and other nations enacted and enforced draconian sterilization measures on their most helpless citizens. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of poor, mostly Black women were forcibly sterilized under the eugenic sterilization laws.
- This illustration, entitled Die Drohung des Untermenschen, or "The Threat of the Under‑Man," is from the 1937 German publication A People in Danger. It addressed the problem of criminal Whites and says "Male criminals had an average of 4.9 children, criminal marriage, 4.4 children, parents of slow learners, 3.5 children, a German family 2.2 children, a marriage from the educated circles, 1.9 children."
- As George Santayana and others have said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And so, we are slowly descending into the eugenics mentality once again, having not learned our lessons from the past.
- Ever since organized agitation for legalized abortion began in the United States in the early 1960s, pro-abortionists have been promising us all kinds of societal benefits, including reduced crime and child abuse. Of course, none of these empty promises have actually come true. NARAL Pro-Choice America said in 1974 that “Legal abortion will decrease the number of unwanted children, battered children, child abuse cases, and possibly subsequent delinquency, drug addiction, and a host of social ills believed to be associated with neglectful parenthood.” Reference: Looseleaf booklet entitled "Organizing for Action." Prepared by Vicki Z. Kaplan for the National Abortion Rights Action League, 250 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019. 51 pages, 1974. See especially the chapter written by Emily C. Moore, Ph.D., entitled "The Major Issues and the Argumentation in the Abortion Debate," pages 33 to 43.
- In 1970, Daniel Callahan wrote that “To withhold the possibility of a safe and socially acceptable abortion for unmarried women is to start the chain of illegitimacy and despair that will continue to keep poverty, crime and poor mental health high on the list of pressing social problems.” Reference: Daniel Callahan. Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality [New York City: MacMillan Publishers], 1970.
- The 1972 Rockefeller Report on Population Growth and the American Future, written entirely by pro-abortion activists without the input of a single pro-life person, claimed that “[Children of women denied an abortion] turned out to have been registered more often with psychiatric services, engaged in more antisocial and criminal behavior, and have been more dependent on public assistance.” This statement, of course, was entirely ideological in nature and has been decisively disproven. Reference: “The Report of The Rockefeller Commission on Population Growth and the American Future,” 1972. Chapter 11, “Human Reproduction.”
- Many other influential people have echoed NARAL’s opinion since the legalization of abortion in 1973. Minneapolis Police Chief Anthony Bouza said that "When abortions are illegal, poor women deliver and keep their babies. Then they plunk them in front of a TV set, watch them get abused and conditioned to violence by parades of males, and expose them to all the factors the criminologists describe as the precursors to a life of crime. ... Making abortions freely available to the impoverished young women who produce our criminals is very likely the most important crime‑prevention measure adopted in this country in the last 25 years.” Bouza described the "at risk" population as "poor, Black and Indian," and said that their offspring are "marked for failure." Oddly, Bouza touched upon the real source of the crime problem apparently without realizing it: The disintegration of the family. Reference: Anthony Bouza, a former Minneapolis Police Chief and columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in a 1990 Mother's Day editorial entitled "A Mother's Day Wish: Make Abortion Available to All Women." Quoted in Mary Ann Kuharski. "Aborting the "At Risk" Population: Racism Rears its Ugly Head." ALL About Issues, Winter 1991, pages 16 and 17.
- Interestingly, racist groups have always supported the abortion of Black babies. They know that it took 86 years to lynch 3,500 Black people (between Reconstruction in 1882 and the last lynching in 1968), but it takes just 86 hours to kill that many Black preborn babies with abortion today. That is why many racist Web sites, like Tightrope at http://tightrope.cc/catalog/, sell T-shirts and other wares that say “FIGHT CRIME: Abort Black Babies.” These are the same nice folks who will sell you revoltingly tasteless items such as smiley Hitler mouse pads and “White Power” patches. When it comes to exterminating the Black race, the Ku Klux Klan were just promising rookies when compared to today’s abortionists. References: For the number of people lynched, see the Wikipedia entry on "Lynching," which is based upon Tuskegee Institute archives. Black women currently obtain about 400,000 abortions annually in the United States, or about 3,900 in 86 hours.
- Many of the people who promote abortion to reduce crime are probably linking lower crime rates to a smaller Black population in their minds. Since Roe v. Wade, about 11 percent of the White race has been wiped out by abortion. About fifteen percent of Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and Hispanics have been aborted. But nearly one-third of the Black race (31%) has been aborted. This is obviously going to have a huge impact on all aspects of our society, and it is natural for some people to believe in the equation “less Black people = less crime.” Percent of Each Race Wiped Out by Abortion Percent Race Abortions Wiped Out All Races 55,128,654 14.9% White 24,446,500 10.7% Black 18,091,000 31.4% Hispanic 9,487,500 15.2% Asian/Pacific Islander/Native American 3,104,200 14.7%
- Enter John J. Donohue and Stephen D. Levitt. In 2001, they published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics entitled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.” Their primary finding was that "Legalized abortion contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. ... Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime." Reference: John J. Donohue III and Stephen D. Levitt. "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime." Harvard University's Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2001.
- Pro-abortionists immediately seized on this finding to claim that they had been right all along. Canadian abortionist Henry Morgentaler said that “Unwanted children are often neglected and abused and this results in emotional infantile rage which is repressed but might eventually result in violence when directed outwards. The fact that due to the legalization of abortion fewer unwanted children are being born, and consequently there are fewer violent individuals with rage in their hearts, is obviously the main reason for the decrease in crime, especially violent crimes such as murder or rape.” Reference: Henry Morgentaler. "Abortion Main Cause of Decline in Crime." Morgentaler Clinic Company Press Release, August 13, 1999.
- An entire cottage industry sprang up around the Freakonomics brand, and a lot of it was due to the finding that finally seemed to indicate that abortion had produced some actual social benefit by reducing crime. This is very important, because even most liberals find themselves distinctly uncomfortable with the idea that there have been more than 55 million abortions in the United States, 97 percent of which have been for purely social reasons such as “I’m not ready to raise a child” or “I want to complete my education before having a child.” If abortion is valuable from a social standpoint, all the guilt feelings about it that many liberals suffer would just disappear. So let’s have a look at the statistics to see whether Donohue and Levitt were correct in their findings.
- The findings of Donohue and Levitt are twofold: Their stated conclusion is: Since aborted children are “unwanted,” they would likely have grown up in a home with parents that do not love them, so they would be more prone to abuse and neglect and therefore more likely to engage in criminal activities; and Their unstated conclusion is: Abortion culls certain demographic groups that are more prone to crime (usually African-Americans). According to John R. Lott in his book Freedomnomics, “African Americans have an abortion rate that has consistently been about three times that of whites and a murder rate about 6.5 times that of whites.” Reference: John R. Lott. Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't. Regnery Publishing, page 121.
- If we look at the gross numbers of incidents of violent crime beginning in the year 1991 (18 years after Roe v. Wade), and track them to 2008, we see that they have indeed dropped dramatically. Murder has dropped by nearly half, or 45%; rape by 31%; robbery by nearly half, to 47%; aggravated assault by 36%, and property crimes by 37%. References: See Facts of Life spread sheet F-24-12.XLS, "Violent and Property Crime Incidence and Rates in the United States, 1979-2009." It is based upon United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012 [132nd Edition] [Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office]. Table 306, "Crimes and Crime Rates by Type of Offense: 1980 to 2009," and earlier editions of the Statistical Abstract.
- If we look at a graph of violent crime rates from 1960 to 2010, the case Donohue and Levitt make looks pretty convincing. Violent crime offenses peaked in 1991, exactly eighteen years after Roe v. Wade, and then began to rapidly decline. Since violent crime rates among teenagers is the highest of all age groups, reasoned Donohue and Levitt, then the free and easy availability of legalized abortion must have caused the decrease in crime. Aaaaaand … this is where it all ended. Donohue and Levitt went only this far in their analysis, and the media swallowed it whole without asking any questions.
- Donohue and Levitt are correct in their assertion that, percentage-wise, most murders are committed by 18-, 19- and 20-year olds. During the time period 1976 to 2002, this age group committed 11.2 percent of all murders in the United States. Reference: Chart on page 132 of Freedomnomics.
- At this point, everyone just stopped thinking. Here were two famous and popular economists arriving at a conclusion that everyone in the media elite just loved, something they had hoped was true, something they wanted to believe, and here was “proof!” As Conan O’Brien likes to say, “Oh, It Looks Goooood!” So nobody really looked at the actual numbers for a while, and when they did, the results were surprising.
- For all of their popularity and fame, Donohue and Levitt had completely forgotten the #1 rule of a good economic or scientific theory: It has to be repeatable. In other words, if it works in one place, it must work everywhere else in order to be valid. If you do not follow this rule, you are merely hyping a coincidence and making connections that simply do not exist. As it turns out, the drop in the violent crime rate eighteen years after the legalization of abortion is just that, and only that ― A coincidence.
- To show that the situation in the USA was only a coincidence, let us first take a look at the society that is closest to us both demographically and geographically ― Canada. In 1988, the Canadian Supreme Court struck down all abortion laws. This means that there are absolutely no limits on abortion in Canada: No waiting periods, no parental or spousal consent, no limits on sex selection. You can have an abortion for any reason ― or for no reason at all ― right up until the instant of birth. In fact, many women do this; hundreds of perfectly healthy newborn babies are delivered and then have been starved to death simply because their mothers didn’t want them. They call this “fourth trimester abortion” in Canada. Eighteen years after the abortion laws were entirely eliminated (in the year 2006), there was absolutely no change in the slow decline of the rate of violent crime in Canada. Unlike in the USA, the Canadian abortion laws were all struck down at once. There was not the rather gradual introduction of abortion over a period of years that we experienced in this country. Therefore, the drop in crime should have been quite dramatic beginning in 2006. Instead, the violent crime peak in Canada was just four years after the legalization of abortion in Canada ― in 1992. If we are to believe the thesis posed by Donohue and Levitt, this means that a disproportionate number of murder, rapes and aggravated assaults are committed by Canadian … four-year-olds. Other nations with high abortion rates have not shown a decrease in crime eighteen years after they legalized abortion. For example, in Great Britain, which legalized abortion in 1968, violent crime has been rising steeply since about 1985 ― exactly when it should have been declining, according to the Donohue‑Levitt thesis. Additionally, Russia, with the highest abortion rate on earth, is experiencing a tidal wave of every kind of violent crime in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union. References: "Statistician Says Abortion‑Crime Study is Erroneous." Fox News, May 16, 2001; Steven Ertelt's Pro‑Life Infonet, May 17, 2001. Also see the National Post online, May 17, 2001.
- Back to the United States. Donohue and Levitt apparently assumed that Roe v. Wade suddenly unleashed a flood of abortions on the USA. However, in 1972, the year before Roe, more than 361,000 legal abortions and tens of thousands of illegal abortions were performed under “mental and physical health” exceptions in nearly all of the states. Four states, including populous New York State, had already legalized abortion, and thirteen others ― including California and Florida ― had so many exceptions that they possessed practical abortion on demand. Donohue and Levitt’s thesis assumes that, on January 22, 1973, abortion suddenly flipped “on” in the United States, and that there were few or no legal or illegal abortions before this time. Reference: John R. Lott, Jr. and John Whitley. “Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births.” Economic Inquiry, June 29, 2006, page 3. Source of map: Guttmacher Institute.
- Now let us look at juvenile violent crime rates in the United States. Historically, we can see that the juvenile violent crime rate in the United States was relatively level until 1987. After that, it began to rise rapidly. By 1990, it had increased more than 25 percent in just three years. The Donohue-Levitt thesis is that abortion reduces crime by reducing the number of crime-prone “unwanted” children. So if we add eighteen years to 1973, the year abortion was legalized, then crime should have started dropping among juveniles in 1991, as shown here. http://www.isteve.com/freakonomics_fiasco.htm
- In reality, though, the violent crime rate among juveniles continued to increase rapidly for another three years after the 18th anniversary of the legalization of abortion, and then began to drop until it receded back to 1980s levels.
- The area outlined in pink is the difference between the annual juvenile violent crime rates if Donohue and Levitt’s theory were true and the actual historical annual figures. Two other researchers, John Lott and John Whitley, found that violent crime (particularly murder) began “falling first among an older generation — those twenty-six and older — who were born before the Roe v. Wade decision. It was only later that criminality among those born after Roe began to decline as well.” Additionally, the rate of homicides committed by young females ― which should have been equally affected by abortion as males ― has not dropped. References: Freedomnomics, page 112, and John R. Lott, Jr. and John Whitley. “Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births.” Economic Inquiry, June 29, 2006, page 3]; "Statistician Says Abortion‑Crime Study is Erroneous." Fox News, May 16, 2001; Steven Ertelt's Pro‑Life Infonet, May 17, 2001. Also see the National Post online, May 17, 2001.
- Demographic and social trends are almost never as simple as one cause leading to one effect. They are almost always caused by multiple influences. This is certainly the case when we examine why violent crime began to decline in 1995. Experts attribute the decline in crime to a number of factors, including; Reinstitution of the death penalty by the Supreme Court in 1976, which began to have a deterrent effect upon the most violent age group, 18 to 20, about nineteen years later; Increased arrest, conviction and incarceration rates; So-called “broken windows” policing ― cracking down on minor crimes following the theory that, if less serious crimes result in arrests, the perpetrators will generally not progress to more serious crimes as often; Longer prison sentences for violent crimes; Increased concealed carry laws (40 states by 2007); A stronger economy; The waning of the crack epidemic, which generated a large percentage of the violent crime in the United States; Affirmative action policies in police departments, which led to better relationships with minority groups in large cities; and An increase in the number of police officers in high-crime cities. Professor Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman edited a 2000 book entitled The Crime Drop In America, in which they say "25 percent of the drop [in crime] was the result of the prison expansion movement and that the significant drops in crime during the 1990s was also a result of changing drug use, increased gun control/intervention efforts, changes in adult and juvenile homicide rates, changes in policing, the labor market, and basic demographics. In other words, the crime drop was caused by a host of key factors mostly resulting from changes in political, economic, and social conditions, thus creating an intricate web of causes affecting the crime rates since 1992” [Professor Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman [Editors]. The Crime Drop In America [Boston: Cambridge University Press], 2000]. Reference: Freedomnomics, pages 102 and 103.
- The fundamental thesis of Donohue and Levitt is that abortion decreases the number of so-called “unwanted children,” which leads to less crime, since these children are more likely to be neglected and abused. But this whole theory falls apart, because we can show that abortion leads to an increase, not a decrease, in the number of “unwanted children.” We can show this through examining the comparative perceived risks of premarital sex between when abortion is illegal and when it is legal.
- When abortion is illegal, having sex outside of marriage carries a significant risk. Women know that they might get pregnant and have to bear and raise a child on their own, and men know that they might be “on the hook” for child support. So both men and women tend to be more reluctant to engage in premarital sex when abortion is illegal.
- When abortion is legal and easily available, there is a perceived “safety net.” As premarital sex becomes more and more common, it becomes more and more socially accepted, creating pressure on all women to engage in it. This includes women who would never have an abortion. These women usually do not think very much about their possible pregnancy decision when they start having premarital sex, because they have total confidence in the effectiveness of the contraceptive methods they are using. Several studies have shown that the legalization of abortion actually increases the number of unplanned births. The authors of one Harvard study found that reducing restrictions on abortion increases out-of-wedlock births but decreases births in two-parent families. Many men now expect their partners to get abortions if the understanding was that they were just “hooking up” or having what is now called “recreational sex.” If she decides to keep the baby, the man will in the vast majority of cases just wash his hands of her and dump her, saying “It’s her choice. If she wants the kid, she can raise it herself.” Everyone who has been a pregnancy center counselor for any time at all has seen this situation many, many times. There are twice as many contraceptive failures as there are abortions in the USA, 2.5 million to 1.2 million, so there are at least 1.3 million women who have “unplanned births” every year due to contraceptive failures. In fact, four out of five women obtaining abortions are unmarried. How many times has the typical crisis pregnancy center worker seen a young woman shocked by a positive pregnancy test, and protesting that she always uses condoms or was on the pill? Children of cohabiting couples also get much less care than do children of married couples since cohabiting couples have much higher breakup rates Children of unmarried couples are also much more likely to be seen as burdens by their parents, and are much more likely to be involved in crime when they become teenagers. Finally, a recent study showed that children of unmarried children are five times as likely to be victims of violent crime as children of married parents who live together. References. Alberto F. Alesina and Paolo Guiliani. “Divorce, Fertility and the Shot Gun Marriage.” Harvard University Institute for Economic Research Working Paper, June 2006 [Number 2117]. See also George Akerloff, Janet Yellen, and Michael L. Katz. “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1996, pages 277-317. Jennifer Hunt. “Do Teen Births Keep American Crime High?” Journal of Law and Economics, October 2006, pages 533 to 566. Jay D. Teachman, Jeffrey Thomas and Kathleen Pasch. “Legal Status and Stability of Corresidential Unions.” Demography, 1991, pages 571-186. See also Britta Hoem and Jan M. Hoem. “The Disruption of Marital and Non-Marital Unions in Contemporary Sweden,” in James Trussel, R. Hankinson and J. Tilton [editors]. Demographic Applications of Event History Analysis [Oxford, England: Clarendon Press], 1992, pages 61 to 93. George Akerloff, Janet Yellen, and Michael L. Katz. “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1996, pages 277-317. Also see Jonathan Click and Thomas Strattman. “The Effect of Abortion Legalization: Evidence from Sexually Transmitted Diseases.” Journal of Legal Studies, June 2003. The authors found that there was a “large increase in gonorrhea and syphilis rates due to changing sexual behavior” as a result of abortion [page 431]. Also see George Akerloff and Janet Yellen. “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Birth in the United States.” Brookings Policy Brief, August 1996. “Teen Children of Unmarried Parents 380% More Likely to be Victims of Violent Crime: Study.” LifeSite Daily News, January 14, 2013.
- This graph shows that the percentage of out-of-wedlock births in the United States has been rising steeply since about 1960. At that time, only five percent, or one in twenty, babies were born to unmarried women. This number had risen to 13 percent by 1973, the year of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. Today, a disastrous 45 percent of all children are born out of wedlock, and this number will exceed fifty percent in just five years. Currently, three out of every four Black babies is born to unmarried mothers. The easy availability of abortion is a key contributing factor to this huge increase of out-of-wedlock births in the United States. Even the New York Times editorialized that “Nearly everyone agrees that the breakdown of families is feeding into a destructive cycle of poverty, educational and developmental deficits, and incarceration.” References: Human Life International’s Facts of Life DVD, Excel spreadsheet F-24-14, “The Increase in Single-Parent Households and Out-of-Wedlock Births in the United States, 1960-2012;” “2006 Program Seeks to Fight Poverty by Building Family Ties.” New York Times, July 20, 2006.
- This explosion in out-of-wedlock births is the driving force behind most of the problems among children in the United States today. For example, one in five children of married parents are “poorly engaged” in school ― that is, they who have problems paying attention, studying, and doing their homework. This number climbs to one out of every three children of single or cohabiting parents. About one in ten kids of married parents were expelled or suspended for disciplinary reasons from school over the past year, and nearly one in four children of single or cohabiting parents were expelled or suspended. Children of married parents skip school much less than children of single or cohabiting parents, and they are also much healthier. Reference: Child Trends tabulations of data from the 2002 National Survey of America’s Families. See also Laura Meckler. “How a U.S. Official Promotes Marriage to Help Poor Kids.” Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2006.
- After examining all of this statistical evidence, we can arrive at a general conclusion: Even if abortion did reduce crime among one segment of the population by “culling it,” this effect is more than offset by the huge rise in crime that abortion indirectly causes by encouraging out-of-wedlock births. So the real question is: Do we attack the actual causes of crime ― or unborn babies? Even the secular press warned strongly against making policy based upon the findings of Donohue and Levitt ― even if they had been true. An editorial in The London Independent said that "[E]ven if ― and it is a very big if ― this research were in some sense perfect, it seems a very weak underpinning to derive policy from. We could, after all, end human hunger, poverty and misery as well as crime by making abortion compulsory. It is that absurd“ [8/11/1999]. Phillip Morris, associate editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, was even more to the point when he wrote that "[The authors'] theory is...proof that imprisonment in an ivory tower can warp minds and that strict adherence to mathematical models and actuarial tables can lead smart people to confused conclusions. ... Is one entitled to assume ... that an aborted male who would have been born into an impoverished single-parent home, where the father is incarcerated, would have been more likely to commit crimes? ... [S]uch a theory cannot possibly take into account the dynamism of the human race and the unique DNA with which each of us is endowed" [8/10/1999]. Hartford Courant columnist Amy Pagnozzi wrote that "A myopic scholarly paper turns into a sensational story, once you've substituted the words 'potential criminal' for 'unwanted child.‘ Send it out over the wires around the world, it becomes another bomb the shock-jocks and schlock politicians can lob at the poor“ [8/13/1999]. Finally, author and sociologist Vivian Martin wrote that "Levitt and Donohue's research is as dangerous as if the authors did indeed have an agenda, which they say they don't. Studies like these tap into deep racism and other biases in the culture and set off a ripple of unintended consequences, even the shaping of public policy. Already, the media attention is unusual for research that has not undergone the peer review necessary before being published in a leading scholarly journal" [Hartford Courant, 8/12/1999].
- As well as indirectly contributing to the massive increase in crime, abortion contributes in a smaller but more spectacular way directly to violent crime. Those involved in the abortion industry have a much higher rate of violent crime than any other segment of the medical profession.
- Here are just a few examples of the extreme violence that leaders in the abortion industry have been involved in. Prominent Oklahoma City abortionist John Baxter Hamilton made over six million dollars doing 30,000 abortions over twenty years. He was carrying on an affair with a topless dancer, and his wife Susan discovered it. Two days before Valentine's Day 2001, they argued and spoke of divorce. On Valentine's Day, they had another argument. It concluded when Hamilton choked his wife with a necktie, beat her over the head with a heavy blunt object hard enough to smash a hole in her skull, and then slammed her face repeatedly onto the marble floor of the master bathroom in their exclusive Quail Creek home. He had been doing abortions before he killed his wife, and returned to his abortion mill to do more after killing her. A jury found Hamilton guilty of murder and sentenced him to life without parole, despite his lawyers saying that pro-lifers killed his wife, not Hamilton himself! During the trial, pro-abortionists threatened the lives of Oklahoma City news agency workers, Oklahoma County District Attorney Wes Lane, and witnesses against the abortionist.
- Abortionist Malachy DeHenre, the primary abortionist at the New Woman Medical Center abortion mill in Jackson, Mississippi, murdered his wife, Mysha Rose, by shooting her once in the head with a handgun. He was convicted of manslaughter. He had been accused many times of raping his patients and lost his license to practice medicine in New York, Alabama and Mississippi due to bungled abortions. He also killed abortion patient Leigh Ann Stephens Alford.
- Eric Henry’s girlfriend was pregnant, and he wanted her to have an abortion, but he had no money to pay for it. So he approached his step‑grandmother, Anne Gordon, the popular pastor of St. Anne's Cathedral Holy Church of Deliverance, for the money. But she was pro‑life, and refused to give it to him. So he beat her, duct‑taped a plastic bag over her head so that she could not breathe, then used the tape to bind her hands and feet so she could not remove the bag. As she lay dying, she asked God to forgive Henry for what he was doing to her. Henry was sentenced to life in prison.
- Alicia Ruiz Hanna was convicted in of murder after she killed mother of four Angela Nieto Sanchez at her abortion mill. Hanna had done the abortion herself, in spite of the fact that she actually had absolutely no medical training, and prevented anyone from dialing 9-1-1 when Angela began suffering seizures. After she died, Hanna tried to stuff Angela’s body into the trunk of her car in full view of her small children.
- Arizona abortionist Brian Finkel sexually molested more than one hundred of his abortion clients, and a jury sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He was strongly defended by every area “pro-choice” group despite the terrible suffering he inflicted upon all of these women.
- A Pennsylvania jury charged abortionist Kermit Gosnell with eight counts of murder after it was discovered that he delivered hundreds of babies at or near full term and then killed them by severing their spinal columns. The National Abortion Federation, the trade union of abortion clinics, inspected his abortion mill, saw the filth and abuses there, but covered for him by failing to report him.
- The “mainstream media” talks frequently about “pro-life” violence, even when reporting on stories that have absolutely nothing to do with it. This has given most people the general impression that pro-lifers are part of a vicious and violent movement that will stop at nothing to oppress women. All of this is based on eight murders committed by so-called “pro-life” people during the time period 1993 to 2009.
- The corrupt media conveniently neglects to mention the hundreds of murders committed by “pro-choice” people. Most of these are boyfriends who murder their pregnant girlfriends because they refuse to have abortions. Crisis pregnancy center workers should be aware that from 35 to 45 pregnant women are murdered every year because they refuse to have abortions. If a client expresses concern that her boyfriend is violent towards her or others, and has said that he wants her to have an abortion, she might be in actual physical danger.
- CPC workers should also be aware of the fact that hundreds of women have been killed by abortionists since Roe v. Wade, as shown here. It helps to know about abortionists in your area that have been charged with or convicted of medical crimes such as incompetence, malpractice, misconduct and negligence.
- This slide shows some of the crimes that pro-abortion people, including clinic workers, have been involved in. The total is well over 12,000 incidents of violence and lawbreaking. All of this is documented on Human Life International’s Abortion Violence Web site at www.abortionviolence.com.
- For documentation on more than twelve thousand cases of pro-abortion violence by state, see Human Life International’s “Abortion Violence” Web site at this address.