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SHOWTIME. This was what a sector of the press called the Senate
resumption of the euro investigation of a group of Philippine
National Police last week. Having squeezed the last ounce of drama
out of the testimony of Joc Joc Bolante, the senators have found a
new subject to chew on in aid digestion, election and, oh yes, and
legislation.
Bolante found a more congenial place at the
house. And the coup that put Senator Juan Ponce Enrile as the new
Senate President may have effectively ended Bolante’s “Way of
the Fertilizer” passion play in that chamber.
The stories on the world financial crises were
also tapering down from scare headlines to regular reports on the
coming depression. There is a slight argument because Philippine
economic managers see only a recession. The World Bank says that
while the Philippines have put in place financial reforms over the
last few years, it will not be exempt from the fallout of the
present crisis. This particularly sticks in the craw of the usual
critics who cannot see anything good that the present administration
has done.
But I have a more important clarification to
make. In an offhand report last week of something I heard read from
an audio book, I mentioned the dramatic drop in the crime rate in
the United States in the 1990s after a threatened rise in the 1970s.
I said that there might not be a direct cause and effect
relationship between these two developments. The book I was
listening to was Freakonomics by Stephen D. Levitt.
Levitt was “talking” via my son’s I-pod
and I thought he was just talking about teenage crime rate and not
overall crime. He discussed many reasons for the dramatic shift from
a threatening acceleration to a rapid deceleration. To be sure of
what I heard, I sought a printout of the chapter on “Where have
all the criminals gone?” in his book.
Many reasons were given for the drop in the
crime rate but in the end, Levitt shows that it was US Supreme Court
decision on “Roe and Wade” that was the main reason.
“Before Rose vs. Wade, it was predominantly
the daughters of middle- or upper-class families who could arrange
and afford a safe illegal abortion. Now, instead of an illegal
procedure that might cost $500 any woman could easily obtain an
abortion often for less that $100.
“What sort of woman was most likely to take
advantage of Roe vs. Wade? Very often she was unmarried or in her
teens or poor, and sometimes all three. What sort of future might
her child have had? One study has shown that the typical child who
went unborn in the earliest years of legalized abortion would have
50 percent more likely than average to live in poverty; he would
have also been 60 percent more likely than average to live in
poverty; he would have been 50 percent more likely to grow up with
just one parent. The two factors—childhood poverty and a single
parent household—are among the strongest predictors that a child
will have a criminal future. Growing up in a single parent home
roughly doubles a child’s propensity to commit crime. So does
having a teenage mother. Another such study has shown that low
maternal education is the single most powerful factor leading to
criminality.
“In other words, the very factors that drove
millions of American women to have an abortion also seemed to
produce it that their children, had they been born, would have led
unhappy and possibly criminal lives.
“ . . . Perhaps the most dramatic effect of
legalized abortion . . . and one that would take years to reveal
itself was its impact on crime. In the early 1990s, just as the
first cohort of children born after Roe vs. Wade was hitting its
late teen years—years during which in which young men enter their
criminal prime—the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort
was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest
chance of becoming criminals. And the crime rate continued to fall
as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers
had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion
led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime;
legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.”
Now lets take the case of Nicolae Ceausescu, the
Communist dictator of Romania. In 1966, he made abortion illegal. On
December 16, 1989, there was a “people power” demonstration with
a lot of young people in Timisoara to protest his regime. Police
fired on the demonstrators killing some. A few days later in
Bucharest, Ceausescu gave a speech. Again the young people came out
in force. This time they went after him and his wife, Elena. After a
trial, they were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day.
“Of all the Communist leaders deposed in the
years bracketing the collapse of the Soviet Union, only Ceauscescu
met a violent death. It should not be overlooked that his demise was
precipitated in large measure by the youth of Romania—a great
number of whom, were it not for his abortion ban, would never have
been born at all.”
These situations arose in two different
societies and in both cases abortion would appear to be good. Our
Constitution not only prohibits abortion but artificial
contraception as well. Which is the most controversial and important
aspect Reproductive Rights Bill. And the Catholic bishops are asking
congressional supporters of the Reproductive Rights Bill to a
dialogue over the question.
Their justification is moral, not economic.
opinion@manilatimes.net
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