Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Chapter 4
This chapter started out stunning me by explaining about the insane leaders of Romania, named Nicolas and Madame Ceausescu. What really stunned me was when the author explained how they bugged there own children to ensure loyalty to them. Madame Ceausescu also required that she have 40 homes!! What really bothered me about these leaders was there policy on birth control in Romania, and how they forced women to have children. It shocked me how they would take women from work to get a pregnancy test, and if they continued to not conceive they were given a steep "celibacy tax"!! Nicolas Ceausescu and his wife had an ironic ending when the young people, with an average age of 13-20, protested his regime in 1989. This resulted in Nicolas to be put on trial and got him a punishment of death by firing squad. If it wasn't for his ban on abortion, and forced births, the majority of protesters wouldn't have been alive. I like how the author used this history to compare how legalized abortion resulted in the drop of the crime rate in America. Out of the eight crime drop explanations that were given I believe I would have leaned towards increased prison time as the major factor. But I do believe that legalized abortion was the biggest factor that dropped the crime rate in the late 1990's, because mothers who knew that they couldn't raise there child in a positive environment were able to prevent the child from growing up in adverse conditions. A quote from the book that supports this is that, "since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced about 30% drop in crime relative to low abortion rates." This is an interesting "unintended benefit" of abortion. I found it fascinating that in Switzerland every adult male is given an assault rifle for militia duty and is allowed to keep it at home. But what's even more interesting is that it is one of the safest places on earth and it has the highest per capita basis with firearms.
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3 comments:
The findings on abortion were astonishing. This goes to show there is always a good and bad side to almost every issue. Abortion has been looked down upon as a dirty and immoral practice for as long as anyone can remember. Who would have thought that society could end up benefiting from this practice? This chapter in the book really made me think. While I think that abortion is a very bad thing in term of it being unfair to an unborn person, I do take notice of the other side of the issue. Though, I still believe that everyone deserve a shot a life.
Those people in Romania were crazy and it was very ironic that the age of the protesters were between 13-20. I feel like there are many factors for the crime rate drop. However I don't believe that abortion is the main contributor for the simple fact that no one as any idea that the kids that were aborted would turn out to be the ones committing the crimes. Just because someone is put in a bad situation doesn't mean that they are definitely going to stay in that situation and/or add to it.
Abortion is a very touchy subject and there are no right or wrong answers persay. I agree that the legalization of abortion dropped the crime rate. Being born into a broken home drastically raises the chances of criminal activity for lack of better parenting. For example, in Russia, there is an abundance of homeless children roaming the streets. I forget exactly what the name of these "gangs" are called but they are all homeless and cause trouble around the cities. They were all born into broken homes or abandoned at birth...
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