>This is all academic, since the LP is in favor of legal, publicly
>funded abortion. I'm told that belief to the contrary has been
>encouraged by writing that has appeared under the byline of Alexander
>Cockburn.
Now, now, Doug. This is what Alex actually wrote (the full text, a profile of HRC, is up on the CP website--jsc)--
...There's not much of a left anymore. But there are plenty of therapeutic cops around, and Hillary is their leader, the very essence of social worker liberalism. All it takes to usher in the New Jerusalem are counselors, community action programs and tougher gun laws, which is what Hillary called for after Columbine, not long after she gave the First Man that bit of advice about bombing the Serbs. As a tough therapeutic cop, Hillary does not shy away from the most abrupt expression of such therapy, the death penalty. In this light perhaps we ought to look at her commitment to Choice as another piece of therapeutic policing.
Steve Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, and John Donohue III, a law prof at Stanford, have been circulating a paper--reported in the Chicago Tribune this past Sunday, Aug. 8--that the legalizing of abortion in the early l970s has contributed to the falling crime rate in the l990s. Indeed, they claim that legalized abortion may account for as much as half the overall crime drop between 1991 and 1997. Levitt says abortion "provides a way for the would-be mothers of those kids who are going to lead really tough lives to avoid bringing them into the world."
The authors cite stats from five states that legalized abortion before the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. These five states with high abortion rates in the early 1970s had greater crime drops in the l990s. The Trib's story quotes Cory Richards, a policy wonk at the Guttmacher Institute, saying, "This is an argument for women not being forced to have children they don't want to have. This is making the point that it's not only bad for the women, but for children and society." So, from the social engineering, crime-fighting point of view, the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1977 saw Roe v. Wade as its logical precursor and concomitant. I don't think it's the way Germaine Greer or the Boston Women's Health Collective ever saw the Choice issue, but I can certainly imagine Hillary argue for abortion as socially therapeutic. She comes from the liberal social engineering tradition that sponsored the great sterilizing boom earlier in the century, whose rampages in Vermont are only now coming to light. Hillary, never forget, is a Methodist, and that bleak creed of improvement is bedrock for her. She's a social cleanser. This is the cold steel that stiffens her spine and carries her forward, self-righteous amid the untidy mess of all her contradictions.
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