Consider the crime rates in the United States. There's something rather peculiar about these graphs:
There's a general increase in property crimes up until the 1990's, after which they start dropping. Violent crimes stay about steady up until that same time period, after which they start drastically dropping.
What happened in the 90's that caused this? What's so special about that time period?
Perhaps that's the wrong question to ask. Perhaps the correct question to ask is what happened when the generation that became adults in the 90's were born. In other words, what happened in the early 1970's?
What happened in the early 1970's is that abortion was legalized in the entirety of the United States. That's what.
Which means that less and less people were born into families that didn't want them, and thus, proportionally speaking, more and more people were wanted and loved, rather than neglected and mistreated.
I don't know if this is the real explanation. It could be. For the sake of this argument, I'm going to assume this is the main contributing factor to the decrease in crime rates that we are seeing since the 90's, and that if abortion were fully banned and criminalized, those curves would start once again going up in about 20 years. The argument is pretty compelling.
However...
Let's think about this for a moment.
A long time ago I read a story. For the life of me I can't remember if was about an actual country and an actual movement that the leaders of that country made, or whether it was just fictional (or made up). And if it was about a real happenstance in history, I don't remember if they actually went and did it, or if they just planned it. But that doesn't really make a difference with respect to this context.
The story went that centuries ago some kingom decided to solve their homelessness, vagrancy and poverty problem, and thus the subsequent crime problem, by gathering up all the homeless people, putting them in old seaships, sailing them to the open sea and sinking them.
Would this decrease crime in the country? Sure. But would it be morally and ethically justifiable?
Crime is a problem that all societies suffer from, and humanity has suffered since forever, but we can't just commit genocide in order to get rid of that problem. This end does not justify the means. This is the dilemma of the human condition. Crime is a real problem, but we can't go mass-murdering people in order to solve that problem. It simply is a price we unfortunately have to pay as a society with human rights.
Thus the "abortion decreases crime rates" argument is not any more justified, in itself. Decreased crime rates are not justification enough to kill undesirable and unwanted people.
There's a general increase in property crimes up until the 1990's, after which they start dropping. Violent crimes stay about steady up until that same time period, after which they start drastically dropping.
What happened in the 90's that caused this? What's so special about that time period?
Perhaps that's the wrong question to ask. Perhaps the correct question to ask is what happened when the generation that became adults in the 90's were born. In other words, what happened in the early 1970's?
What happened in the early 1970's is that abortion was legalized in the entirety of the United States. That's what.
Which means that less and less people were born into families that didn't want them, and thus, proportionally speaking, more and more people were wanted and loved, rather than neglected and mistreated.
I don't know if this is the real explanation. It could be. For the sake of this argument, I'm going to assume this is the main contributing factor to the decrease in crime rates that we are seeing since the 90's, and that if abortion were fully banned and criminalized, those curves would start once again going up in about 20 years. The argument is pretty compelling.
However...
Let's think about this for a moment.
A long time ago I read a story. For the life of me I can't remember if was about an actual country and an actual movement that the leaders of that country made, or whether it was just fictional (or made up). And if it was about a real happenstance in history, I don't remember if they actually went and did it, or if they just planned it. But that doesn't really make a difference with respect to this context.
The story went that centuries ago some kingom decided to solve their homelessness, vagrancy and poverty problem, and thus the subsequent crime problem, by gathering up all the homeless people, putting them in old seaships, sailing them to the open sea and sinking them.
Would this decrease crime in the country? Sure. But would it be morally and ethically justifiable?
Crime is a problem that all societies suffer from, and humanity has suffered since forever, but we can't just commit genocide in order to get rid of that problem. This end does not justify the means. This is the dilemma of the human condition. Crime is a real problem, but we can't go mass-murdering people in order to solve that problem. It simply is a price we unfortunately have to pay as a society with human rights.
Thus the "abortion decreases crime rates" argument is not any more justified, in itself. Decreased crime rates are not justification enough to kill undesirable and unwanted people.
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