RandomLetters, read Airblairxxx’s link regarding racism. Can you make racist statements out of the data…yep. Is Levitt himself doing so. No, he is looking at data and telling you what it says. Data isn’t racist. The interpretation may be, but if the researcher ignores what the data is telling him because he thinks it could be interpreted as racist, he isn’t a good researcher. You don’t ignore data simply because its telling you something you don’t want to hear.
I just thought about this. A poor woman who finds herself pregnant has 2 options:
#1) Scrape up the money for an abortion, and transportation to and from an abortionist.
#2) Decide to have the baby. Even with Medicaid paying the medical bills, there is the problem of transportation to and from the doctors and hospitals during the pregnancy, when the baby is born, and then pediatrician visits for the new baby.
Putting all sentiment aside, for such a woman to figure out some way of getting an abortion is the economically rational decision. The only exception would be if the woman wanted to have a kid just to be able to get welfare. However, no woman with that in mind would even consider an abortion.
I believe there are clinics (and/or state programs?) that will provide abortions for free or cheap, just as they do with condoms and birth control. I personally know one young woman who had an abortion, and I don’t believe she could’ve afforded to pay several hundred dollars for it. She was later given a free oral contraceptive prescription by the same clinic, through a state program.
I wouldn’t think this would be a good example. Not a lot of violent crime in Appalachia, me thinks, so whilst lots of poverty, not a lot of murders.
Also, I would think lots of poverty-striken mothers in Appalachia would be married; buckle of the Bible belt and all…
Might be more complex than that. Compared to the overal black/hispanic/white distribution in the U.S., blacks and hispanics are highly overrepresented in the percentage of people living close to or under the poverty line. The same goes, however, for the number of women who get pregnant in their teens, and get pregnant unwanted.
That this means that black and hispanic women are more likely to have an abortion follows easily. But what does not follow from this, is that they are more likely to have an abortion in comparable situations. White women are less likely to be poor, and less likely to become pregnant unplanned. So they are less likely to opt for an abortion when they do.
Well it does decrease the incidents of illegal abortions. But then again legalizing carjacking should reduce the crime rate too.
Being married is no guarantee a baby would be welcome.
True…
There is a sign off the freeway in a cornfield … it reads “GOD IS PRO-LIFE, ARE YOU”. I have a problem with this sign and I know a few other people do because I have seen it paint-balled at times… too bad the rain washes it away.
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Have these people asked GOD what GOD actually thinks on this matter? Do they have a direct line to GOD…? Can you please have GOD call me cuz I got a few things I want to discuss…
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Wouldn’t the statement “GOD IS PRO-CHOICE or even PRO-DEATH” be true as well? Since death and choice still go… :rolleyes:
You’re assuming pregnant women do everything they should do in term of pre- and post-natal care. Years ago I interviewed for a job as a patient advocate at a free hospital prenatal clinic, and quickly realized I wouldn’t last a week on that job when they told me of all the women who called for their first prenatal visit in the 8th month.
And these were urban women, usually not in their first pregnancy, who had a free clinic and excellent public transportation available to them. I think the clinic even gave women subway tokens to come for followup visits.
Um, yes you can. You can do a DNA test prenatally to test for things like Fragile X or Paternity. It’s expensive and there are risks, but it’s not something that isn’t done.
I did not know that.
Huh. You learn something new every day!
Here’s an alternate theory: As better information processing technologies are available to law enforcement, it becomes a lot easier to nail the repeat offenders that are responsible for a big chunk of crime and put them away for a loooong time. It’s just a lot harder to slip through the cracks today than it was 20 years ago.
Levitt makes a flip-case against Nicolae Ceaucescu, whose attempts to raise the population of Romania were between severe and insane. Not only were abortion and contraception illegalized and made punishable by imprisonment or even death (the only exceptions were for women over 45 or women who had 5 or more minor children, or of course for high ups in the Communist party- the Ceaucescu’s had three children, incidentally [one adopted]) but men and women over 25 who had no children had to pay up to 20% of their income in penalty taxes. Info on Ceaucescu birthrate measures.
The population did swell, but the consequences were disaster: massive unemployment, unprecedented crime, poverty, etc… In one of history’s great ironies, Ceaucescu’s fall and execution were brought about largely by the rebellion of hundreds of thousands of Romanian youths, many of whom probably would not have been born had it not been for his measures.
That’s how I like my irony served, my friend! 
Glad I made a thread search… I just read the Freakonomics.
I suggest reading his published papers that go into a lot of details about what dropped crime. Some other conclusions are that concealed weapons didn’t change much crime… nor did gun bans.
His Abortion and Crime drop correlation seems quite solid… and actually scary. Goes to show how much parenting can make or break kids.
How do we determine who did and who didn’t want a child if they keep it?