the benefits of legalized abortion
I've been reading Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's book Freakonomics. A particular passage strikes me as fascinating and I wanted to know what you out there think.
A bit of backstory. As you'll recall, crime and gang violence was paramount in the minds of all Americans in the early and mid 90s. Teenage violent offenders and violent ( Read more... )
A bit of backstory. As you'll recall, crime and gang violence was paramount in the minds of all Americans in the early and mid 90s. Teenage violent offenders and violent ( Read more... )
I would suggest things such as: a better social security system so that children don't grow up in such poverty, better state education so that children from poor backgrounds can find ways to improve their economic circumstances in ways other than crime, better free healthcare for children, parenting classes and mentoring for disadvantaged parents, better sex education and free contraception so that poor young women are less likely to have unplanned pregnancy to begin with.
Crime and vice have always existed and I don't know a good way to circumvent human nature.
But interestingly crime rates differ considerably in different countries and their crime rates are not correlated with their abortion rates so either Scandinavians are genetically more law abiding than Italians or there are factors other than killing poor people's fetuses that affect crime rates.
The problem is also that it has been proven that unstable family lives breed criminals.
Maybe we could have government policies that make families more stable by providing them with practical support to help them raise their children.
How is religion not then eugenics? Religion emphasizes peace, tolerance, and compassion. Do you believe that if there was no religion then criminals would be deprived of their right to be violent?
You don't appear to know what eugenics is. Eugenics involves changing the human gene pool by preventing some people from breeding or genetically modifying them. Resticting people's actions other than reproduction is not eugenics so one can stop people from being violent without it being eugenics.
Do you believe that criminals are born inherently violent and thus we need to have them in society because they have a right to exist?
Do you believe that criminals exist in society to thin out the herd? What about serial killers? Do they serve a fundamental purpose?
No, no, no
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Regarding Eugenics...do you believe that every human life has a purpose? In other words...are criminals a product of nature or nurture? What about people with mental retardation--like autism or down's syndrome?
China has a sort of eugenics in place now where they will only allow one child born per family. Do you feel this is improper?
Being that we live in an often irrational world where people will often not act in their own best interest--how can we work within the limits of human error or basic selfishness?
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Lots of complex factors, social norms and peer pressure probably have a lot to do with. I'm not a criminologist but you know what, there are no reputable criminologists claiming that some countries have genetically more criminal populations. Even the author of the paper your original post was referring to didn't claim that the connection was that because the fetuses that had been aborted were genetically predisposed to criminality. He claimed that unwanted children tended not to be cared for so well and that makes people more likely to end up as criminals.
Regarding Eugenics...do you believe that every human life has a purpose? In other words...are criminals a product of nature or nurture? What about people with mental retardation--like autism or down's syndrome?
Those two things are not equivalent in any way. The fact that G-d has a plan for each person does not alter whether criminals are the product of nature or nurture. Autism and down's syndrome do not make someone more likely to be criminal. The only genetic characteristic for which there is any evidence of making someone more liable to be a criminal is a Y chromosone.
China has a sort of eugenics in place now where they will only allow one child born per family. Do you feel this is improper?
Again you appear to have no concept of what eugenics means. China's one child policy is not a engenics policy at all. Eugenics is controlled human breeding based on notions of desirable and undesirable genotypes. As, to the best of my knowledge, the Chinese policy did not target people with desirable/undesirable genotypes it was not a eugenics policy.
Being that we live in an often irrational world where people will often not act in their own best interest--how can we work within the limits of human error or basic selfishness?
Not by killing people before they're born on the grounds they might grow up to be a criminal.
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I think that you believe that there is always a possibility that someone who is born into unfit circumstances will rise above it all and manage to live a decent life in spite of it.
To me, this seems to be the exception, rather than the rule. And, if it were genetically possible, I would advocate that we eliminate, biologically, the inclination towards criminal behavior.
And yes, I suppose that's a sort of selective breeding--but morality aside, I hold a very dim view of the ability of a person to change in the face of unfortunate circumstance.
For exasmple, only 10% of all addicts seriously reform themselves, and I would rather eliminate the possibility for addiction biologically then have to deal with the overwhelming majority--90%.
A Eugenics-like idea is, I'm aware, a sort of slippery slope---but in an ever increasing world, we will have to take steps such as these to ensure that everyone who is born on this planet has the chance to survive. The world will likely overpopulate sooner than later and competition for natural resources will force us to make these decisions.
I feel that viewpoints such as the one you hold are rapidly becoming invalid.
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is the concept of paternalism. Paternalism, as I understand it, states that "we (society) know better than you do, thus we (society) will act in your best interest because you are likely either incapable or unwilling to do so on your your own"
think about cigarette smoking laws, for example. Smokers are increasingly finding that they do not have the legal right to smoke in enclosed places or in certain areas. These laws are being passed to protect non-smokers from the harmful effects of second-hand smoke.
However, if we lived in a totally lassiez-faire society, smokers would be allowed to smoke wherever and whenever they chose--being that smokers have the right to their own private pleasure.
I think very shortly laws will be in the books that prohibit use of tobacco altogether.
Think if we applied this same line of thinking to criminal behavior. We would say, in effect, that criminals are only allowed to be a detriment to society in certain designated areas and not in the vicinety of non-criminals. Why? Because it is believed by science that criminal behavior in society is a danger to health. Thus, we believe that simply because criminals have the right to damage themselves and their health--and despite the pleasure they might receive from being criminal; we (society) feel that the health of non-criminals will suffer as a result.
So, very shortly, laws will be passed that make being a criminal illegal.
Science is rapidly finding a way to identify gene or genes that will, in effect, prevent people from being born with the desire or need to smoke. What if we could do this with criminal behavior?
Are we not circumventing the idea of free will, in effect?
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Here is the paper you are referring to http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf Please read it before you continue to guess what it says. The closeat it comes to eugenics is to observe that African Americans are more likely to be the perpatrators and victims of violent crime and to comment on how changes in their demographics may have affected crime rates. He does not put forward an explanation for the higher involvement of African Americans in crime; he simply observes a statistical relationship.
Now to his point on legalised abortion. He does not claim that the fetuses aborted were genetically inferior. He thinks that the connection between legalised abortion and homocide works through two channels:
a) women resent children they have wanted to abort but have been forced to raise. This resentment leads to poor parenting which makes the child more likely to enter into criminality. There is nothing intrinsically genetically wrong with the children involved. If they had been adopted by families who had wanted them they would not have been more likely to be criminal.
b) the drop in the birthrate resulting from legalised abortion was greatest amongst non-white teens. Teenagers tend to be worse mothers than non-teens and, as has been noted above, African Americans are statistically more likely to be involved in crime.
Even if you take on board that some people are more likely to be criminal through an accident of their birth, the majority of people in this catagory do not go on to become criminals. As the chapter in Freakonomics notes, over 100 fetuses were killed per homicide reduction in the crime rate. Even if legalied abortion were the only cause of the decrease in the US crime rate, which if you read Steven Levitt's paper you would see that it isn't, logically that would imply that over 99% of the fetuses aborted would have grown up not to be murderers. You might think that someone from an 'more criminal' demographic background rising above their up bringing is the exception rather than the rule but I'm afraid that the statistics of the matter are against you in that opinion. Your statement that addicts tend to relapse does not support the assertion that some people are genetically almost certain to become addicts. It could just as easily be the case that there is no genetic component in addiction at all but the addict behaviour patterns are difficult to break once they have been established.
So, very shortly, laws will be passed that make being a criminal illegal.
Umm, hate to break this to you. Being a criminal is already illegal. I'm not sure what anarchic wonderland you live in but where I live being a criminal, as in being someone who has committed a criminal offence, is illegal. In fact I think semantically it would be impossible for being a criminal to not be illegal.
Science is rapidly finding a way to identify gene or genes that will, in effect, prevent people from being born with the desire or need to smoke. What if we could do this with criminal behavior?
This confirms any suspicion that you know very little about genetics. The human genome does not have lots of magic little genes that switch on whether someone's a smoker or gay or an arsonist. The genome contains lots of genes that interact in unbelievably complex ways with each other and the enviroment. It's relatively easy to identify the genes that cause disorders resulting from the misfunction of one gene or chromosone, heamophilia for example. When it comes to more complex conditions, science is just about at the stage where it has identified some genes that make people more likely to get certain physical conditions such as cancer. Science has a very long way to go before it can even identify genes that make people marginally more likely, given the right conditions, to commit a crime.
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Criminal behavior or any sort of social dysfunction are problematic. They have plagued human existence for as long as there have been humans.
And there are no easy answers.
Much of my argument was hypothetical. I am aware that currently human genetics are understood so unsufficiently that we cannot yet determine why people have genetic predispositions towards lots of things--much less criminal behavior. But suppose we could know.
And when I said that criminal behavior was illegal, I was attempting to parallel every precept of the smoking vs criminal argument. I don't live in an anarchic fantasy. I know that criminal behavior is illegal.
I know that nature and nurture have a powerful influence on us. And I know that few things about human behavior can be attributed to just nature or just nurture.
I hope someday that we'll be able to understand with certainty at least a few prominent facets of a very complex gemstone. Maybe then we'll be able to cut down on criminal behavior.
But if we eliminated criminal behavior, biologically, do you think that there would be people arguing for the sanctity of criminal behavior? Its right to exist?
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