Why Pro-Choice is actually Pro-Life

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." - Jackie Robinson

There was arguably no more important figure in the American Civil Rights movement than Jackie Robinson and his quote listed above is something that I try to remember every single day. It may be seen as inappropriate to tie a peaceful American hero into my argument about one of the touchiest subjects in the United States but please just hear me out.


My argument has been the same since I was about 18 years old when I could first vote and somehow the issue of abortion was brought up. If someone were to walk up behind me and shoot me in the back of the head, I could not care about that happening. The only people who would be affected are all of the people who I have shared my time with and in some way impacted their lives. Therefore, if there is an expectant mother, and hopefully father, who realize that they are unable to care for a child, they are the only people in the world who should have any say in their decision to terminate the pregnancy.


I only bring this up now because today is the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision by the United States Supreme Court. Today, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner posted on his twitter account the following message: "The 38th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade is a tragic reminder that we must respect life at all stages, especially the innocent unborn #prolife".

What Representative Boehner is probably unaware of is that his stance of wanting to repeal Roe v. Wade would have a detrimental effect on not only the would-be parents of unwanted children but the populous in general. You see, abortion has a direct correlation with crime. The following is a piece written by Steven D. Levitt that appears in the book Freakonomics:

After abortion was legalized, the availability of abortions differed dramatically across states. In some states like North Dakota and in parts of the deep South, it was virtually impossible to get an abortion even after Roe v. Wade. If one compares states that had high abortion rates in the mid 1970s to states that had low abortion rates in the mid 1970s, you see the following patterns with crime. For the period from 1973-1988, the two sets of states (high abortion states and low abortion states) have nearly identical crime patterns. Note, that this is a period before the generations exposed to legalized abortion are old enough to do much crime. So this is exactly what the Donohue-Levitt theory predicts. But from the period 1985-1997, when the post Roe cohort is reaching peak crime ages, the high abortion states see a decline in crime of 30% relative to the low abortion states. Our original data ended in 1997. If one updated the study, the results would be similar. 

When assessing virtually any situation in life, the main question that needs to be asked is whether or not the decisions made will impact you or those around you. In the case of abortion, it is a decision between the expectant mother and to some degree the father but there is no other person who needs to concern themselves with a decision that will have no impact on their daily life. To those who do may not fully understand the impact of forcing someone to keep an unwanted child, it will almost surely be a negative one.