The New Era - All about Sweet Home since 1929

Editor:

Violent crime nearly quadrupled between 1960 and its peak in 1991, then it fell and kept falling. Why?

John J. Donohue and Steven D. Levitt wrote a paper called “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors That Explain the Decline and Six That Do Not.”

The six factors that, according to their analysis, did not contribute to the crime drop: 1.  a strengthening economy; 2. the aging of the population; 3. innovative policing strategies; 4. gun-control laws; 5. right-to-carry laws; and 6. the increased use of capital punishment

The factors  Levitt  found that did contribute to the crime drop: 1. the increase in the number of police;

2. an increase in the number of criminals imprisoned; and 3. the decline of the crack-cocaine trade.

But these three factors only explained half of the massive drop in crime. Turns out they found legalized abortion accounted for the rest. 

Crime began to fall roughly 18 years after abortion legalization in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.

The five states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines in crime earlier than the rest of the nation.

States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s.

Those who were born after Roe v. Wade did much less crime than those who were born before Roe v Wade. 

Why?  Unwanted children are more likely than average to engage in crime as they got older. There’s been numerous studies on human infants and children and some absolutely heartbreaking experiments done on monkey babies showing the devastating effects of  unwantedness. 

Speaking of unwanted children. Here’s what you get when you regulate a woman’s right to her own body (as the religious right/republicans and Catholic SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who has advocated against abortion rights and publicly supported reversal of Roe v Wade, desperately want to do).  

In 1966, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu banned abortion, ditto contraceptives. The goal was to increase Romania’s population.

The results were revealed after the fall of communism in 1989 when shocking images of starving, naked and sick children found in overcrowded Romanian orphanages rocked the world – 500,000 children total (~20K died). See “Shame of a Nation 20/20” at  www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Of8BRj4n4 .

Like the liberators of Auschwitz 45 years before, early visitors to the Romanian orphanages have been haunted all their lives by what they saw.

The religious community would like nothing more than for America (land of the free) to have the world’s harshest anti-abortion and contraception laws.

Even Trump himself said, “There has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions.

In China it was just the opposite but the result was just as gruesome.

In the Dominican Republic a pregnant 16-year-old girl with leukemia was denied chemotherapy because she was pregnant and was denied an abortion because in the DR abortion is completely prohibited. So she was left to die.

The Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Nicaragua completely prohibit abortions .... no exceptions! 

If Roe v Wade is struck down by this conservative Supreme Court or the red states ban it and the religious right gets their every wish ... there will be a flood of unwanted unloved kids.

Rich women, as always, will not be affected. It’s the poor, young, unmarried, inner-city, minority women who will be.

So don’t think some version of Romania couldn’t happen here in America.... we are a hair’s breadth away – right now.

Diane Daiute

Sweet Home