Sept. 27 - I had been unable to remember the source, author or name of an article I had read (which turned out to be a book review!) so was unable to link it in my post on Fatherhood and Grandparenthood. I am grateful that reader Andrew P. recognized my brief description and very kindly emailed me the relevant information.

The book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by economist Steven D. Levitt and scientist Stephen J. Dubner was reviewed by Orson Scott Card in Freakonomics Or You Have to Find the Facts Before You Can Face Them. Some of the assertions in the book are controversial and Card touches on one of the hypotheses: that lower crimes rates came about as a result of decriminalizing abortions.

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 longterm consequences of impulsive actions.

The crime rates began falling exactly when that generation of children would have reached adolescence and those with such tendencies would have begun their criminal careers.

It certainly looked as if we killed off much of our criminal class in the womb.

I've only excerpted the portion of the review that fit the blog post I was writing, but the review is about much more than that and addresses one of the biggest problems of this information age: too much specialized knowledge by experts which we can neither ignore nor understand.

I was curious and read about the book at the Freaknomics site and saw something that never fails to get my attention:

[Steven D. Levitt] usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. (Emphasis added)

I need to write (or at least begin) a report on a meeting I attended yesterday evening and then catch some sleep so probably won't post again until tonight.

(Orson Scott Card link via Relapsed Catholic)

Posted by: Debbye at 07:43 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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