baelnic the Braindead wrote:
Samira wrote:
Increase in teen pregnancies and (resentful) single mothers = increase in crime in 15 years or so. Hallelujah!
So how long until
gbaji the Recyclopedia is in here spewing his rebuttal?
Lol! How about right now?
While the basic statement is valid, historical data does not show that legalizing abortion decreases the rate of teen pregnancy. If anything, the data shows the opposite.
Although in this case, it's pretty much impossible to be sure of the social effects of legalized abortion on teen pregnancy rates. It's possible that the sexual revolution would have resulted in dramaticaly higher rates (something like 20 times higher today then 40 years ago) whether abortion was legalized or not. It's possible that by legalizing abortion, we've at least blunted the effects of a higher rate of pregnancy which was going to occur anyway. It's also possible that by legalizing abortion, we helped encourage teens to have sex more often and that has resulted in higher pregnancy rates.
So. Not so much a refutation of the statement, but a refutation of the implied context of the statement. At least, I'm *assuming* that by making the statement, you're suggesting that banning abortions would result in a greater total number of children born to unwed teen mothers, which in turn would result in a higher percentage of angry poor kids in the next generation? If that assumption is correct, then yeah, I don't agree with it. Because there's absolutely no evidence that this is the case, and at least *some* evidence that the opposite is the case.
Again. It *could* be coincidence that during the same time period that we legalized abortions, the rates of teen pregnancies and unwed births just happened to go up. Or there might be a causal relationship between them, in which case you're not just wrong, but dead wrong. In either case, it's definately not wrong to question your logic, since there's literally no evidence to back it up.