Abortion As Depicted In Steven Dubner's Freakonomics

Cassie Jordan
Freakonomics
Throughout the book Freakonomics written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the readers minds are constantly tested by atypical questions that make them change their way of thinking, from morally to scientifically. It points out how people have an ideal image of how things should be, or what they familiarly recognize to be the “right” way things work, and economics prove how things actually work. Based on the data and research gathered on specific topics shown in the book, the claim that “conventional wisdom is often wrong” is proved to be a valid statement. The authors introduce what economists mainly try to prove, “..when moral posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, the result is often
Many commonly conceivable explanations are given as the answer to this such as increased number of police, more imprisonment, and an expanded police force. However, a more anomalous explanation for the drop in crime was that of legalized abortion. When abortion was made legal after the Roe vs. Wade case, the amount of women who had abortions increased dramatically. Levitt stated that studies showed, “childhood poverty and a single-parent household-are among the strongest predictors that a child will have a criminal future”(138). He also explained that “abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime”(139). This theory is something that reaches so far out of the common person’s comfort zone and appears to be so unbelievable; it stretches beyond our common way of thinking. However, the statistics suggest that this could be a very accurate reason behind the drastic drop in crime. For example, a statistic Levitt includes in his argument states, “Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low-abortion
They believe that they are doing what is in the best interest for their child by going with their gut-feeling and by following what they think is the best morally accurate decision to make. The average person is most likely going to feel more at ease being around people and things that they’re accustomed to, like a swimming pool or driving in a car. Those things seem more typical and less petrifying than a gun or flying an airplane. For instance, Levitt declared, “If you both own a gun and have a swimming pool in the backyard, the swimming pool is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than he gun is”(146). It is also stated that 375 more children under the age of ten die a year by swimming pools vs. a gun. However, parents do not know of or cannot accept this basic reality and are “terrible risk assessors”(150). Because of this inability to be aware and accept these facts, parents are constantly making the wrong decisions for their children. Another common fear that people have is the fear of flying over driving, and this can be understood because most people drive cars almost daily, and have familiarized themselves with them. However, according to the book, “It is true that many more people die in the United states each year in motor vehicle accidents (roughly forty thousand) than in airplane crashes (fewer than one thousand)”(151). People are thinking based off