Legalizing Abortion Decreases the Crime Rate

I. Less Repercussion on the Female Means More Incentive to Commit the Crime This is highly unlikely for two reasons. One, rapists rape women to get power over them. Knowing that the woman they are raping cannot have an abortion will put more power in the hands of the rapist, because the woman will be less likely to land a job, much less a well enough-paying career and it damages the woman's chances at marriage. Again, this puts even more power into the hands of the rapist, which is likely to actually increase the number of rapes. Two, this isn't going to stop a rapist at all. I mean if a rapist wants to rape a woman, why should he care whether or not the woman has a baby or not? That's nine months in the future and not his problem. I apologize for having no sources or studies to support my claim, but this is an assertion by my opponent that he has to prove. He has the BoP with this hypothesis, therefore he needs to provide evidence to back up his claim. II. Abortion Has its Expenses This isn't really relevant to this debate, but I will still supply a quick counter to this argument. "[The average abortion] costs about $300–$950 in the first trimester. "[1] The average cost of raising a child for 18 years in an American West city as a single parent with an income of less than $59410 while not planning on paying for this child's education is: $157410. [2] What's cheaper and easier, an abortion that takes only one day and costs, at most, only $950, or raising a child that takes 18 years and costs at least $157410? The former, obviously. And again, I don't see how this negates the resolution, it's just a general argument against abortion, not on how it decreases the crime rate. III. Abortion Can Have an Effect on the Person and the People around Them This is misguided. This is actually what happens if you are DENIED an abortion, not if you have one. An abortion can be done in under one day, but if the woman is forced to have a child, everyone around her will know. Most families like this would be even madder by the fact that their daughter or husband (in cases of adultery, most likely) conceived a baby in the first place than if she had an abortion. And if she is forced to give birth to the child, everyone will know, but if she has an abortion, only the doctors will know. Again, I apologize for not providing any sources to back up my claim, but again, you have BoP and must do it first. IV. Men Are often Ignored on What Should Happen How could the life of the father be put at risk? Isn't it the mother's that is put at risk? Also, my opponent claims that keeping the child would "make the situation less tense and dangerous", but then claims that "[If] the father doesn't want it this can lead to them being violent or withdrawn". This is a contradiction because if the father doesn't want the child in the first place, why would abortion not be the smart choice? And if neither parent wants it. .. V. Legal Abortion Scares People You are correct here, but the "uneducated and highly religious" people in this country who would commit violence or arson to anything related to abortion (i. e. a clinic, a woman who had one, etc. .. ) is very small, so this is almost negligable when counting countrywide crime rate statistics. VI. There Are no Statistics - 'Pizza does not cause ice cream profits' I will cover this in two points. VI. i. There Are no Statistics-'Pizza does not cause ice cream profits' - Rebuttal One: Mentioned Evidence Well, I provided some statistics and evidence for my claim, and I will repeat some here: "An increase in the effective abortion rate of 100 per 1000 live births (the mean effective abortion rate in 1997 for violent crime is 180 with a standard deviation of 96 across states) is associated with a reduc- tion of 12 percent in murder, 13 percent in violent crime, and 9 percent in property crime. "[3] So why are higher abortion rates linked to a 12%-13%-9% reduction in crime per 100/1000 increase? "For instance, homicide fell 25.9 percent in high-abortion states between 1985 and 1997 compared to an increase of 4.1 percent in low-abortion states. "[4] So why do high-abortion states have huge crime drops while low-abortion states have slight crimes increases? "Five states legalized abortion three years before Roe v. Wade. Crime started falling three years earlier in these states, with property crime (done by younger people) falling before violent crime. "[5] ". .. the cumulative decrease in crime between 1982–1997 for early-legalizing states compared with the rest of the nation is 16.2 percent greater for murder, 30.4 percent greater for violent crime, and 35.3 percent greater for property crime. "[3] So why do the early-legalizing states have crimes drops a couple of years before the mean? "Reyes (2002) reports somewhat smaller, but still substantial estimates of abortion on crime using U. S. data. Sen (2002) finds a link between abortion and crime in Canadian data that mirrors the U. S. experience. Pop-Eleches (2002) documents the effects of an unexpected abortion ban imposed in Romania in 1966. "[4] So why do other countries show the same trend? VI. ii. There Are no Statistics-'Pizza does not cause ice cream profits' - Rebuttal Two: New Evidence ". .. we show that the abortion-related drop in crime is occurring only for those who today are under the age of 25. This is exactly the age group we would expect to be affected by the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. "[6] Sources: [1]: . http://www.plannedparenthood.org... [2]: . http://www.babycenter.com... [3]: . http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu... [4]: . http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu... [5]: . http://www.freakonomics.com... [6]: . http://www.slate.com...