Is abortion today’s eugenics?

It seems as if, with the fall of the Nazi Reich, eugenic practices were swept under the rug. No more sterilization practices were induced upon minorities against their will. In fact, nothing of the sorts was mentioned again in theory books. Then, the Civil Liberties Movement happened, and with that, more focus on equality became even more obvious. No one remembered that the same racist neutering practices performed in Germany during the 1930s, were also performed in other Western countries that fought.

By me stating these facts, by no means I am accusing non-germanic countries of hypocrisy during the beginning of the 20th Century. On the contraire, I’m laying the historical ground for what I’m about to explain. And that is that, as liberal as many people think they are today, in their need to be clever, they end up becoming as conservative as those they fervently criticize. For all things can be explained in the perfect form of a circle. At the beginning of it, you find one state of being, in the middle, you find the opposite. Near the end of the circle, at the tip of the snake’s tail, you find extremes that become one with the idea they were opposed to begin with. A great example is someone who considers that all men are equal; he is opposed to a conservative person who says people are not. An extreme liberal can become conservative himself by trying to censor -or even kill- the conservative person who attacks the equality of men. This “liberal” person is the one who exists at the tip of the snake’s tail.

Lately, I’ve been reading unconventional-thought type of books such as The Tipping Point, and Freakonomics. These books focus on reevaluating everyday things with a different pair of lenses. One of the predominant subjects is the drop of the crime rate in the 1990s. They study what data is constant in a given situation, in this case, crime. The economists call this “regression analysis.” They try to determine what are the constants, if the data correlates, or if the data causes a situation. Many experts determined that abortion, longer jail sentences, and improved police practices helped the crime drop. But their winner though (as in, what stopped more crimes from happening) was abortion. And how to blame them? If high abortion rates correlate with low criminal activity. What’s more interesting is that states that legalized abortion sooner (like California, Alaska, Washington, New York, and Hawaii), are the places that enjoyed the drop in crime faster than the rest. Also, these results are constant with other countries like Australia, that also experienced the sharp drop a few decades after abortion became widely available.

It seems as if, those $1.5 million of fetuses who are “disposed” of annually do make a difference. The reality is the following: who aborts other than people in disadvantage situations? Lets face it, middle-class married women tend to abort less than teen would-be mothers. The truth is that people who abort are making the right decision late. They are practicing a reversed form of Eugenics. Instead of making sure these women aren’t getting pregnant to begin with, they are installing abortion clinics outside of the projects.

Somehow, liberals feel sick at the thought of sterilizing minorities. But place abortion in the equation, and it doesn’t feel as sick. The reason -and this is where I dare to speculate- is because certain “solutions” hold either negative or positive connotations depending on what side are we on. Both liberal and conservative people fail to realize they are attempting to solve the same problems; they desire to pursuit the well-being of humanity. Sometimes, liberals might come up with a good idea, but because of the source of that idea, conservatives do not accept the suggestion, and vice-versa. People first study what “team” came up with the solution, instead of focusing on the solution itself. And lets face it, this is something that holds a logic behind it, because if we all were independent thinkers, nothing could be accomplished. We would not agree enough to be able to make teams and perform the changes that we think are needed.

So, eugenics are ammo for liberals, while abortion is ammo for conservatives. They all accomplish the same, although one is related more to the raise of advertisement, while the other is related to fascism. Basically, sterilizing minorities implies to blatantly MAKE people do what they dont want to do. Meanwhile, abortion is like advertisement: “You don’t have to abort, but it would mean a lot if you actually did!” It is the act of persuasion, of allowing chance to exist, that makes abortion appealing to liberals. But why don’t liberals just try to persuade minorities to get sterilized? That way 1.5 millions of fetuses wouldn’t have to die to begin with. Well, I think this is too borderline conservative, so they wouldn’t even bother.

The point is that I do believe in abortion. But I see it more as one of the two German Shepherds that are trying to push sheep into the right direction (a better world). Which one is the other dog? Social reform. Why? Because it would be really hypocrite of us to expect disadvantaged people to not reproduce, yet not try to solve the country’s health/education/minimum wage problems. If these books would also focus on the evils of “leaving people behind,” they wouldn’t be at the tip of the snake’s tail. But because they make such a point in proving how the best solution for the crime problem is to have would-be-criminals not be born at all, is that I accuse them of missing the point.

-Alex