Cover Sheet Cause and Effect
What is the purpose of your argument?
To show that the legalization of abortion ultimately led to a reduction of crimes committed in the 1990’s.
Who is your target audience?
My class mates, because they are the only one’s who will read the paper.
What is your thesis statement?
The 1990’s decline in the homicide rate committed by young men is statistically associated and directly correlated to the legalization of abortion.
Did I learn/try anything new while growing this composition?
I would never have put this correlation together; I read it in Bogost Chapter 1 and was interested in finding out what the correlation was, or if it indeed even existed.
What did I like best about my composition and the composition process?
I went to the library and actually learned how to use the data bases that are offered to USF students. It was to bad that I am at the end of my degree though, the information would have been useful for past papers I have composed. However, the librarians were super nice and aided me tremendously in my research process.
Where would you like to see the most feedback/advice on your final draft?
I would actually like for someone to read it without it being announced in class that no one read it!
Rough Draft Paper 2
Cause and Effect
She was a poor, uneducated, unskilled alcoholic; her age was only twenty one but the years had not been good ones. She lived in Texas and had carried two children to term; both of these pregnancies were unwanted and the children had been put up for adoption. Her name was Norma McCorvey, the year, 1970. McCorvey found herself pregnant for the third time; however, like the first two pregnancies, this was something she did not want. In Texas, as in all but a few states at this time, abortion was illegal. McCorvey sought counsel by powerful people; she was made into the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit seeking to legalize abortion. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The name Jane Roe was used in the lawsuit to protect the identity of McCorvey. On January 22, 1973 the court ruled in favor of Ms. Roe, the case was a landmark for all women in the United States; abortion was legalized. The case, Roe V Wade. It is important to note that by the time abortion was legalized, Roe, or McCorvey had given birth to her child and put the child up for adoption. Perhaps the most significant effect of legalized abortion was its impact on crime. The 1990’s decline in the homicide rate committed by young men is statistically associated and directly correlated to the legalization of abortion.
Typically, unmarried, teenage poor women become pregnant “by accident”. A significant number of these women choose to terminate the pregnancy that would have resulted in a child. If they had given birth, what kind of a future would that child have had? Most probably not a good one. Teenagers having children do not usually have the means to support the child adequately. Would those teenagers do the important things with their child such as read to them, emotionally be supportive, and to be involved in the child’s life? The teenage mom themselves are emotionally immature. One study, Dagg conducted in 1991 received data that these children that would have been born to the teenagers, would have been 50 percent more likely than average to live in poverty. Moreover, 60 percent were more likely than average to live in a one parent home. These two factors, childhood poverty and a single parent house hold are among the strongest predictors that a child will have a criminal future. Another powerful factor that predicts a child will have a criminal future is low maternal education. By itself, growing up in a single parent household roughly doubles a child’s propensity to commit crime. Single parents have the tendency to spend less time with their children than married couples do. Perhaps this is due to married couples “taking turns” spending time with their children. Moreover, single parents are more likely to feel trapped with their children; their children become a burden, so they in turn feel angry towards their child. Statistically, children raised out of wedlock have more social and developmental problems than children of married couples; from the grades, to school expulsion, to disease, children raised out of wedlock are more problematic. No surprising fact then, that children from unmarried families are more than likely to become criminals.
In other words then, the factors that drove American teenage women to have an abortion seem to predict that if they would have had the child, that child would have been most probably unhappy, poverty stricken and probably committed criminal acts later on in their life.
In the 1990’s just as the first group of children born after Roe V Wade was hitting their late teen years, the years often associated with young men entering their criminal prime, the rate of crime began to fall. What was missing? The children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals. The crime rate kept declining; an entire generation came of age, minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into this world. The correlation then, was legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness directly correlates to high crime. Legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.
One way to test if the correlation between legalized abortion and crime falling was significant was to measure crime data in the five states where abortion was made legal before the Supreme Court extended abortion rights to the rest of the country. A woman had been able to obtain a legal abortion for at least two years before Roe V Wade in New York, California, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. These early legalizing of abortion states saw crime begin to fall earlier than the rest of the forty five states and the District of Columbia. From 1988 until 1994, violent crimes in these early legalizing of abortion states fell 13 percent compared to other states. Furthermore, between the years 1994 to 1997, murder rates in the early legalizing of abortion states fell 23 percent more than those of other states, not legalizing abortion.
Furthermore, another way to test this hypothesis of the correlation between Roe V Wade and diminishing crime would be to look at each States abortion rate and its crime rate. The evidence pointed out that the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970’s experienced the greatest crime drops in the 1990’s. If this is not a direct correlation, I don’t know what is. On the other side of the coin, the states with low abortion rates, experienced smaller crime rate drops. Since 1985, States with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low abortion states. There was no link between a given state’s abortion rate and its crime rate before the late 1980’s when the first cohort affected by legalized abortion was reaching its criminal prime. This is yet another indicator that Roe V Wade was indeed the catalyst that tipped the crime wave scales.
To recap, legalized abortions have reduced the crime rate because they are they are used as a means of birth control by women who are most probably to produce criminal offspring. In so far as the Roe V Wade decision giving teenage, unmarried, and indigent women access to legal and safe abortions, it is responsible for the decline in the rate of index crimes that occurred during the 1990’s. If a decline in the rate of births to women agrees, the effects of legalized abortion on the National Crime Rate, then one should be able to observe a substantial decline in birth rates for these categories of these women after 1973.
Therefore, the following is a study using an auto regressive integrated moving average technique to assess the impact of the legalization of abortion on the birthrates for women at risk of giving birth to children who would be expected to disproportionately engage in criminal activities. The study estimated the impact of the 1973 Roe V Wade decision on the birth rate per 1,000 teenage women aged 15 to 19, the birth rate per 1,000 unmarried women and births to unmarried women as the percentage of all births. Members of these groups are more likely than not to take advantage of the change in abortion laws. We would expect to find a decrease in each of these time series as a result of the legalization of abortion in 1973. The data for each of the birthrate series are annual, spanning the years from 1940 to 2003.
Number of Teenage Births
I don't know why my chart will not copy into this space!
To further support the claim that legalized abortion correlates to diminished crime rates in the 1990’s, another study was conducted. The study used data from the NSC, national panel study of U.S. children designed to gather information about the well being of children, especially as it relates to the conditions of family life.
All of the children included in the sample, were born between 1964 and 1969. This was prior to the outcome of the Roe V Wade decision, but also prior to 1970 when a few states allowed legalized abortion. This study allowed for a clear assessment of the differences in outcomes between wanted and unwanted pregnancies in an environment of legally restricted abortion regulations.
The NSC’s initial sampeling was designed to yield a nationally representative sample of children, except that blacks were over sampled to allow for more reliable comparisons of whites and blacks. The first data collection was conducted when the children were ages 6 to 12. This sample had an N, sample population, of 2,301 ,with blacks representing 25 percent of the sample.
In the first interviews, the mother was asked to recall her feelings when she learned she was pregnant. The ideal question would have given mothers a chance to indicate not just that a pregnancy was unwanted, but it could have been aborted, if the opportunity had existed. There was an extreme sensitivity issue with this question though, who would actually answer that they would have opted for an abortion if it was possible. It is hard to guess on what one may have done, or didn’t do. However, the focus was not on the select number of pregnancies that would have been aborted, but on the larger category of those that were mistimed or entirely unwanted by becoming pregnant by sheer accident.
The initial interviews had results of 47 percent of the births were wanted, 17 percent were indifferent, 20 percent were mistimed and 15 percent were unwanted. Basically, about half of the pregnancies fell into the category of not really being wanted. Which in turn would substantiate the findings that unwanted children bring increased crime. Wanted children are more loved, are cared for properly and typically do not grow up to commit crimes.
In conclusion, children born of an unwanted pregnancy will become more highly involved in juvenile delinquency during adolescence and criminal behavior during early adulthood. This subject is very controversial and has its good and bad points. I had never heard of the correlation, until reading Bogost Chapter one; I thought it would be interesting to research, and find out more about the causes and effects as in relation to Roe V Wade.
Works Cited
Abramsky,, Sasha. "Did Roe v. Wade Abort Crime? And Why Hardly Anybody Wants to Talk about It." The American Prospect Vol. 2001 (2001): 25.
Lott, JOHN R. "Abortion and Crime." National Review 59 (2007): 18-22.
Juskalian, Russ. "Economic Theory Plain and Simple." USA Today (07)
Hay, Carter, and Michelle M. Evans. "Has Roe v. Wade Reduced U.S. Crime Rates? Examining the Link Between Mothers' Pregnancy Intentions and Children's Later Involvement in Law-Violating Behavior." Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency 43 (06): 36-66.
Berk, Richard A., Susan B. Sorenson, Douglas J. Wiebe, and Dawn M. Upchurch. "The Legalization of Abortion and Subsequent." Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 3 (03): 45-64.
Holloway, Marguerite. "The Aborted Crime Wave." Scientific American 281 (99): 23
Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics. New York: HarperCollins, 05
Samuelson, Robert J. "Do We Care About Truth?" Newsweek 134 (99): 76.
Murchinson, William. "Crimes of the Heart." Human Life Review 25 (99): 7.
Feedback
Jillian had a headache from reading two papers.
Michelle started to read the paper, but couldn't read it because it was about abortion.
Aldijana
Sue’s paper was interesting. I remember doing an argument paper on abortion in high school. There was a lot of information that I was able to pull from. Sue’s paper contained a lot of information and lacked some emotional appeal. An emotional appeal would make it even more compelling as this is such a controversial topic. I wanted to know more about the statement that talked about unwanted children being more prone to disease. Is this more of the unwillingness of the mother’s to take care of the child or just peer and environment curse?
Nathan's Unit Two Reviews
Reflection on Feedback
Well, sorry Jillian about the headache; Michelle, I already have completed the paper, so I am not changing the subject matter.
Final Paper 2
She was a poor, uneducated, unskilled alcoholic; her age was only twenty one but the years had not been good ones. She lived in Texas and had carried two children to term; both of these pregnancies were unwanted and the children had been put up for adoption. Her name was Norma McCorvey, the year, 1970. McCorvey found herself pregnant for the third time; however, like the first two pregnancies, this was something she did not want. In Texas, as in all but a few states at this time, abortion was illegal. McCorvey sought counsel from Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, both graduates of The University of Texas. McCorvey was made into the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit seeking to legalize abortion. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Weddington was the youngest person to ever argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court). The name Jane Roe was used in the lawsuit to protect the identity of McCorvey. On January 22, 1973 the court ruled in favor of Ms. Roe, the case was a landmark for all women in the United States; abortion was legalized. The case, Roe V Wade. It is important to note that by the time abortion was legalized, Roe (McCorvey) had given birth to her child and put the child up for adoption. Perhaps the most significant effect of legalized abortion was its impact on crime. The 1990’s decline in the homicide rate committed by young men is statistically associated and directly correlated to the legalization of abortion.
Typically, unmarried, teenage poor women become pregnant “by accident”. A significant number of these women choose to terminate the pregnancy that would have resulted in a child. If they had given birth, what kind of a future would that child have had? Most probably not a good one. Teenagers having children do not usually have the means to support the child adequately. Teenagers typically have poor parenting skills, difficulty providing adequate supervision and have low educational attainment.
A 1997 study by University of California researcher Jeffrey Grogger found the sons of teen mothers are 2.7 times more likely to spend time in prison than the sons of older mothers. If all teen mothers were to postpone their first births until the age of 23, then their sons’ incarceration risk would fall by 17 percent. This would decrease the prison population between 52,000 to 65,000 inmates nationally. Would teenagers, having children, do the important things with their child such as read to them, emotionally be supportive, and to be involved in the child’s life? Teenage mothers are emotionally immature themselves. The teenage pregnancy rate in the United States is much higher than in any other industrialized country, costing the United States at least $7 billion annually. One study, Dagg conducted in 1991, received data that these children, if they would have been born to the teenagers, would have been 50 percent more likely than average to live in poverty. Moreover, 60 percent were more likely than average to live in a one parent home. These two factors, childhood poverty and a single parent house hold are among the strongest predictors that a child will have a criminal future. However, by itself, growing up in a single parent household roughly doubles a child’s propensity to commit crime. Single parents have the tendency to spend less time with their children than married couples do. Perhaps this is due to married couples “taking turns” spending time with their children. Moreover, single parents are more likely to feel trapped with their children; their children become a burden, so they in turn feel angry towards their child.
Statistically, children raised out of wedlock have more social and developmental problems than children of married couples; from the grades, to school expulsion, to disease, children raised out of wedlock are more problematic. Compared to children of older mothers, children born to teen mothers are more likely to have physical health problems. They are 50 percent more likely to be low-birth-weight babies, which are associated with a host of physical complications, such as mental retardation, cerebral palsy, blindness, and chronic respiratory problems. No surprising fact then, that children from unmarried families are more than likely to become criminals.
In other words then, the factors that drove American teenage women to have an abortion seem to predict that if they would have had the child, that child would have been most probably unhappy, poverty stricken and probably committed criminal acts later on in their life.
In the 1990’s just as the first group of children born after Roe V Wade was hitting their late teen years, the years often associated with young men entering their criminal prime, the rate of crime began to fall. What was missing? The children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals. The crime rate kept declining; an entire generation came of age, minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into this world. The correlation then, was legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness directly correlates to high crime. Legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.
One way to test if the correlation between legalized abortion and crime falling was significant is to measure crime data in the five states where abortion was made legal before the Supreme Court extended abortion rights to the rest of the country. A woman had been able to obtain a legal abortion for at least two years before Roe V Wade in New York, California, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. These early legalizing of abortion states saw crime begin to fall earlier than the rest of the forty five states and the District of Columbia. From 1988 until 1994, violent crimes in these early legalizing of abortion states fell 13 percent compared to other states. Furthermore, between the years 1994 to 1997, murder rates in the early legalizing of abortion states fell 23 percent more than those of other states, not legalizing abortion.
Moreover, another way to test the hypothesis of the correlation between Roe V Wade and diminishing crime would be to look at each States abortion rate and its crime rate. The evidence pointed out that the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970’s experienced the greatest crime drops in the 1990’s. If this is not a direct correlation, I don’t know what is. On the other side of the coin, the states with low abortion rates, experienced smaller crime rate drops. Since 1985, States with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low abortion states. There was no link between a given state’s abortion rate and its crime rate before the late 1980’s when the first cohort affected by legalized abortion was reaching its criminal prime. This is yet another indicator that Roe V Wade was indeed the catalyst that tipped the crime wave scales.
Legalized abortions have reduced the crime rate because they are used as a means of birth control by women who are most probably to produce criminal offspring. In so far as the Roe V Wade decision giving teenage, unmarried, and indigent women access to legal and safe abortions, it is responsible for the decline in the rate of index crimes that occurred during the 1990’s. If a decline in the rate of births to women agrees, the effects of legalized abortion on the National Crime Rate, then one should be able to observe a substantial decline in birth rates for these categories of these women after 1973.
To further support the claim that legalized abortion correlates to diminish crime rates in the 1990’s, another study was conducted by Carter Hay, and Michelle Evans. The study used data from the NSC, (National survey of children) national panel study of U.S. children designed to gather information about the well being of children, especially as it relates to the conditions of family life.
All of the children included in the sample, were born between 1964 and 1969. This was prior to the outcome of the Roe V Wade decision, but also prior to 1970 when a few states allowed legalized abortion. This study allowed for a clear assessment of the differences in outcomes between wanted and unwanted pregnancies in an environment of legally restricted abortion regulations.
The NSC’s sampling was designed to yield a nationally representative sample of children, except that blacks were over sampled to allow for more reliable comparisons of whites and blacks. The data collection was conducted when the children were ages 6 to 19. This sample had an N, sample population, of 2,301, with blacks representing 25 percent of the sample.
In the interviews, the mother was asked to recall her feelings when she learned she was pregnant. The ideal question would have given mothers a chance to indicate not just that a pregnancy was unwanted, but it could have been aborted, if the opportunity had existed. There was an extreme sensitivity issue with this question though, who would actually answer that they would have opted for an abortion if it was possible. It is hard to guess on what one may have done, or didn’t do. It is particularly hard to say I shouldn’t have had the child. However, the focus was not on the select number of pregnancies that would have been aborted, but on the larger category of those that were mistimed or entirely unwanted by becoming pregnant by sheer accident.
The interviews had results of 47 percent of the births were wanted, 17 percent were indifferent, 20 percent were mistimed and 15 percent were unwanted. Basically, about half of the pregnancies fell into the category of not really being wanted. Which in turn would substantiate the findings that unwanted children bring increased crime. Wanted children are more loved, are cared for properly and typically do not grow up to commit crimes.
In conclusion, children born of an unwanted pregnancy will become more highly involved in juvenile delinquency during adolescence and criminal behavior during early adulthood. Legalized abortions have reduced the crime rate because they are used as a means of birth control by women who are most probably to produce criminal offspring. This subject is very controversial and has its good and bad points. I had never heard of the correlation, until reading Bogost Chapter one; I thought it would be interesting to research, and find out more about the causes and effects as in relation to Roe V Wade. The findings, I believe, were very interesting and supported my feelings that children indeed need two parents; divorced or never married, it is not important. What is important is that the child feels loved and supported by both parents regardless of anything else. It doesn’t take long to make a child but it takes years of dedication and hard work to make that child feel secure and loved.
Works Cited
Abramsky,, Sasha. "Did Roe v. Wade Abort Crime? And Why Hardly Anybody Wants to Talk about It." The American Prospect Vol. 2001 (2001): 25.
Lott, JOHN R. "Abortion and Crime." National Review 59 (2007): 18-22.
Juskalian, Russ. "Economic Theory Plain and Simple." USA Today (07).
Hay, Carter, and Michelle M. Evans. "Has Roe v. Wade Reduced U.S. Crime Rates? Examining the Link Between Mothers' Pregnancy Intentions and Children's Later Involvement in Law-Violating Behavior." Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency 43 (06): 36-66.
Berk, Richard A., Susan B. Sorenson, Douglas J. Wiebe, and Dawn M. Upchurch. "The Legalization of Abortion and Subsequent." Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 3 (03): 45-64.
Holloway, Marguerite. "The Aborted Crime Wave." Scientific American 281 (99): 23
Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics. New York: HarperCollins, 05
Samuelson, Robert J. "Do We Care About Truth?" Newsweek 134 (99): 76.
Peer Review
Nathan's Causal Final Reviews
Aldijana
Sue Edit me.
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