BY TONY BOUZA
Tony Bouza
Hubris is my foe. I strive to persuade Erica that she married a moron and worm, albeit one with a great memory.
I fancy that our core problems are racism and income inequality. They impact everything.
Even Roe v. Wade?
That created a pause; then I remembered my Japanese buddy Yuji. When his hot daughter got pregnant, he flew her to Japan, where abortion was doable.
So, who did the abortion ban impact?
Poor Black and Hispanic women principally.
Roe v. Wade in 1973 assured that street crime would plummet in 1990 when the aborted cohort would not be around. I wrote about it, but I was gone from policing, and avid chiefs willing to acknowledge their contributions to crime’s decline made it to Time’s covers. Economics, yes, but racist? How?
In my experience, abortion, legal or not, was not a question for white women—it was the conundrum of Black and Hispanic teenagers.
The issue was intellectually toxic—if you supported abortion because it reduced crime, you had to be a racist. A dilemma for the intelligentsia.
How to handle it?
Ignore or avoid any reference to the connection.
The result?
A tortured little dance in which the issue of abortion as crime prevention is ignored.
Because of Roe v. Wade America experienced over 30 years of crashed crime levels. The gentrification of Brooklyn was made possible by the sudden safety of tough neighborhoods. Blacks and Hispanics could no longer afford El Barrio. Tough luck and delicious irony. Everybody was happy to pocket the safety but loath to explore it origins.
Today’s elite agonize over the obvious Supreme Court threat to Roe v. Wade, but another delicious irony is about to surface—it won’t matter.
In the interim science has invented chemical abortion. Voila.
The Know-Nothings will fulminate about sacred religious values. They’ll be largely white, rural. My secret, and hitherto unexpressed suspicion is that this cohort would vote for Adolf Hitler, given the chance.
This segment has not been sufficiently studied. Who are they? What do they do?
In a service that I think is both unique and uniquely wonderful, the U.S. Congress, in studying the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, will provide us with a template of who constitutes this merry band of idiots and sunshine patriots.
But this is still only about 20% Trumpers—Wallaceites—Father Coughlinites. We have them and they’ll be with us.
Roe v. Wade conjures a really arresting (pardon the word) complexity as we regard the tergiversations of American political thought. Some expressed. Some unmentionable.
The police are irrelevant to crime levels and, therefore, public safety. Crime is caused by social, economic and educational conditions. Why don’t we acknowledge this simple, obvious fact? Because we are happy to perpetuate racism and economic disparities of grotesque levels.
I haven’t the slightest fear of refutation—or even of a response.
Hire more cops.
