CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, September 6, 1999

Abortion: the latest crime-fighting weapon?

Quick to take credit for this drop in the crime rate (and I am not making this up) are some members of the pro-choice movement. They point to a recent university study that says the drop in the crime rate is due, in part, to Roe vs. Wade – the 1972 case whereby the U.S. Supreme Court decided, on a five to four vote, to legalize abortion.

Between 1973 and 1997, approximately 36 million children were aborted. So, what does the non-birth, if you will, of some 36 million Americans have to do with a drop in the crime rate?

According to the study, the men and women at the bottom end of the economic, social, cultural and intelligence scale conceived the majority of the 36 million who were aborted. In other words, most of the aborted children would have been the children of the so-called dregs of society. Thus, if they had been allowed to live, they would have more than likely lived a life of crime. Ergo: aborting them dropped the crime rate.

For those who lived through or recall World War II, such thinking has an all too familiar ring. Do you recall the dictator who thought he could make society “better” through Eugenics -- the elimination of certain classes or types of people?

Just out of curiosity, I asked one of the Internet search engines to look up the Eugenics Movement. The very first entry had this to say: “Let us not forget who the granddaddy of the Eugenics Movement was --- Adolph Hitler. This man developed and designed a program which would racially purify the entire planet through mass genocide, beginning with the Jews. The main idea behind Eugenics is for the improvement and the advancement of the human race, not the eradication of it. Ideally, and in the ‘right’ hands, Eugenics would prove to be beneficial if it is directed toward the actualization of the human race.”

But who are the “right” hands? Who gets to decide which lives are worth living and which lives are not?

Adolph Hitler was deeply influenced by the writings of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and other organizations that promote abortion as just another means of birth control, Here are some quotes from Margaret Sanger: “The Government of the United States deliberately encourages and even makes necessary by its laws [against abortion] the breeding, with a breakneck rapidity of idiots, defectives diseased, feeble-minded and criminal classes.” In 1925, Margaret Sanger told the International Birth Control Conference, “While the U.S. shuts her gates to foreigners, no attempt whatever is made to discourage the rapid multiplication of undesirable aliens and natives within our borders.”

Prior to Roe vs. Wade, we Americans reserved to the individual states and to the nation the right to decide terminate the lives of other human beings. We said murder and certain other crimes are so heinous that the state has the power to decide if the perpetrators must themselves pay the ultimate price in order that they cannot repeat their crime and to serve as deterrent to would-be murderers.

We said in time of war our fighting men and women are allowed to kill fighting men and women of enemy nations and not be guilty of murder. But Roe vs. Wade, on the basis of a new-found Constitutional right-to-privacy, says an expectant mother can decide to abort her unborn child and not be guilty of murder.

No fair trial needed. No state of war need be declared by Congress. The expectant mother decides who lives and who dies.

Now, some in the pro-choice movement want us to believe abortion is not only a Constitutional right, but fights crime as well. Hitler and Sanger would agree.

William Hamilton is a syndicated columnist and featured commentator for USA Today.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com