ACADEMIA, Aug. 9 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A shocking report being circulated among economists and criminal law experts suggests that legalizing abortion, with the subsequent escalation in the slaughter of unborn babies, has benefited society by keeping future criminals from being born. The unpublished study, reported on by the Chicago Tribune yesterday and the Toronto Sun today, has received mixed reviews.
In order to add a moral impetus to abortion, pro-aborts have long sought evidence that unwanted children are disproportionately likely to be deviants as well as impoverished and poorly educated. The authors of the study in question conveniently “conclude that unwanted children are most likely to commit crimes as adults, and those most likely to give birth to unwanted children are teenagers, minorities and the poor. Those are also the people most likely to choose abortion, the study found,” reported the Sun.
Canada’s Henry Morgentaler philosophized on this point late last year, saying that “fewer unwanted children are being born … the ones that get neglected, abused or brutalized. These are the children who when they grow up sometimes have this vengeance, rage and hatred in their hearts.”
In response to the current U.S. study, Douglas Baird, a University of Chicago law professor, argues: “‘I would find this paper much more plausible if they found abortion affected education rates, unemployment rate’ and other aspects of society,” noted the Sun. The authors of the study are Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and John Donohue III, a Stanford University law professor.
In response to claims like these, lists have been put together by pro-lifers of the kinds of people who might have been aborted today, but who, because they lived despite their hardships, have contributed powerfully to the world. This scenario could well lead to abortion today: “The father is sick with sniffles, the mother has TB. They have 4 children.
1st is blind, 2nd is dead, 3rd is deaf, 4th has TB. She finds she’s pregnant again.” Yet that fifth pregnancy produced Beethoven. Then there is this scenario: “A teenage girl is pregnant. She’s not married. Her fiance is not the father of the baby, and he’s very upset.” That was the predicament of Jesus Christ’s mother, Mary. Then there’s the case of the very poor preacher and his wife who already have 14 kids. “Now she finds out she’s pregnant with a 15th.” Number 15 was John Wesley, one of the great Christian evangelists of the 19th century.