Impact of Abortion Laws on Society: A Romanian Case Study

Freakonomics

“Where Have All the Criminals Gone?” Makalynn Brown

Pols 101

Summary:

Chapter four of Freakonomics starts off by giving background information of the dictator in Romania. Nicolae Ceausescu was the dictator of Romania that made abortion illegal. With this new abortion law Ceausescu wanted to strengthen Romania’s population. Before the abortion law, there were four abortions to every live birth (Levitt and Dubner, 2009). However, women who already had four children and were apart of the communist party were exempt from this law. Within one year of this act the population had doubled. Studies had shown that people who were born after the abortion law would do worse in school, in work, and would sometimes be more likely to become

In the 1990s crime was at an all time high, but suddenly it dropped to an all time low. Experts investigated and found that numerous ideas could have been affecting the decline in crimes. A strong economy, prisons, gun laws, and population to name a few. Levitt and Dubner ask the question, why has crime risen so high in the first place? A strong economy would often be linked to lesser crimes, but studies have shown there is no relation. The biggest link to this is during the 60’s when there was a ton of crime and the economy was high as well. Another false idea of why crimes dropped in the 90s, is the justice system. Criminals were now being convicted for longer sentences. Criminals who would have originally got off the hook for doing drugs were now in prison; many other sentences got increased as well. This lead to more than two million people in prison (Levitt and Dubner, 2009). The increase of punishment for criminals quadrupled between the 80s and 90s (Levitt and Dubner, 2009). The first flaw the authors speak of is that executions are long and drawn out. Death row now only has a 2% execution rate while getting killed by a gang is 7% chance. (Levitt and Dubner, 2009). The second flaw is that capital punishment is more obvious. One criminal getting executed means seven fewer homicides (Levitt and Dubner,

Where the authors talked about the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. It was interesting to learn about the different culture of Romania and what exactly went on when Ceausescu was dictator. I also thought it was intriguing reading about how many abortions actually happened in Romania. However, after Roe v. Wade the number of abortions in America was about the same as it was in Romania. A bunch of the facts and statistics that were incorporated throughout the chapter surprised me numerous times. That is one thing that I really enjoyed about this