Dear Reader,
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) yesterday over-ruled (6 in favour, 3 in dissent) the 22nd January 1973 landmark Roe v Wade judgment which ruled (7 in favour and 2 in dissent) that state regulation of abortion is illegal. The majority opinion written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun argued that abortion is not about choice, and the constitutional right to privacy being exercised by a woman implicit in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
It was not a surprise. The 1973 landmark judgment has been a contentious issue for the conservatives ever since it came to be. The efforts to undo this protection were on for some time, the states such as Georgia, Ohio, and Alabama first limited the practice, and eventually tried banning them outright in specific cases. With the Supreme Court of the United States becoming more conservative in the last few years, the reversal on Roe v Wade was on the cards.
However, in a democracy things are done in the name of the people. Is there a widespread support for this? It is complicated.
The overturning of Roe v Wade will have a long term consequences. If access to abortion is made illegal, or extra-legal parents who do not wish to raise kids will be forced to do so this will have an impact on social cohesion, and according to two economists might have a huge negative effect on crime.
In a paper published in 2001 economists John Donahue and Steven Levitt argued that access to abortion in states where it was banned before 1973 made crime rarer by double digit percentage point stretching to 23%. This was a significant paper, and was criticised for programming errors, mathematical issues and the problem with research design. The paper gained prominence as it was featured in the runaway bestselling book Freakonomics.
Nearly 20 years later a working paper was circulated by the same authors in National Bureau of Economic Research, and in this working paper they address the research design issues, issues with methodology. In this new paper they argue that of the 50% reduction in crime since 1990, a whopping 45% could be attributed to access to abortion. The primary evidence cited by them is the rate of reduction in crime was faster in states with access to abortion than states where this was a rarity, they cite the high incident of crime in places with frequent abortions in 1990, to states where abortion was infrequent. By the year 2014, there was a convergence of crime rates in both these states.
The authors argue that there is a statistical causation implied in the association. Using annual level data on crime, abortion, and other important factors such as economic conditions, welfare payments, firearms access, and alcohol consumption - they sought to isolate the impact of abortion on violent crimes, after controlling other variables that also influence crime rates.
They report Ceteris paribus increase in accessing abortion rate of 100 per 100,000 birth leads to a 10 - 20% reduction in crime. There are other studies that prove that children born in halfway houses or broken homes are much likely to turn to crime and have a poorer life prospect to compared to those who are born in a stable families. For those of you who are interested in the entire two decade saga of this paper, the Freakonomics podcast has a 50+ minute episode, it is worth getting into. There are still issues related to methodology that crop up but they are not methodology based as much as they are ideology based.
In a country where the outright support for a move such as overturning the Roe v Wade is not palpable, and the benefit of doing so will reverse the gains of reducing crime, one has to wonder if the tools of better decision making such as presence of behaviour units in government, think tanks are successfully navigating the insularisation of democracies, for the 1973 judgment had five conservative judges agreeing with the minority on an important issue beyond partisanship.
On 26th September 1960 the talk of the town was the first televised debate between candidates Nixon, and Kenedy. People who watched the debate on television were more likely to vote for Kennedy than those who listened to the radio.
Visuals increasingly dominate our world. Let's say how you choose things daily. Do you think emotions and aesthetics impact our judgment? Most of us use automatic judgment based on how an item is aesthetically appealing. We are comfortable paying a beauty premium.
Nixon had become a national figure in the United States by 1960. He had been Vice President for eight years, even filling in once for the President when Eisenhower had heart surgery. He had prevailed in a verbal showdown with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at a Moscow exhibition and proved to be a master of the new television medium. In 1952, Nixon commanded one of the largest TV audiences during his highly successful “Checker” speech.
While Kennedy was a regional politician in the 1950s, he was charismatic but lacked the wide national appeal of Nixon. When the 1960 Presidential campaign had started, Kennedy was behind Nixon in poll numbers. Two presidential candidates were going live in a televised debate for the first time. High-profile events with concentrated mass attention tend to change political narrative quickly if appropriately utilised.
Nixon was campaigning until just a few hours before the first debate started. He had not wholly recovered from his three-week-long stays in hospital because of an inflamed knee and thus looked pale, sickly, underweight, and tired. When he arrived at the studio, his injured knee slammed into the car door, increasing the pain. He was looking around during the debate, visibly sweating. As a result, the black and white TV screens prominently showed his facial stubble. Nixon was wearing a grey suit which got blended with the background.
A recent study conducted by Jon-Erik Lōnnqvist, Ville-Juhani Ilmarinen, and Markku Verkasalo of the University of Helsinki showed how people who looked relaxed, physically appealing, and smiled often, were most liked by people. News anchor Dan Rather recalls, “Kennedy kept his gaze straight ahead, engaging his TV audience. But Nixon kept looking from side to side, addressing the reporters in the studio. Kennedy seemed confident; Nixon seemed like he didn't want to be there.”
An estimated 70 million viewers watched the first debate. In the aftermath, Kennedy opened a 48 to 43 per cent lead. The Kennedy Campaign aired over 200 commercials using footage from the debates. Findings that we subconsciously choose based on physical appearance are not new. In 1999, a study examined the perceptions of leader charisma. They found that the strength of speech delivery is more influential than the speech content. And we all got a glimpse of John F. Kennedy's personality, thanks to the sitcoms. In the famous Nixon vs Kennedy presidential debate, Kennedy utilised what is now referred to as visual rhetoric. The theory of visual rhetoric is used in visual media to achieve a rhetorical effect. Through visuals, a sense of natural affinity is built and thus, imagery as a rhetorical form impact public communication.
More and more people are less and less informed about politics. In such a scenario, a candidate's appearance may determine the outcome. Educating people and creating awareness of political issues seems to be the only way not to let the visual appeals override critical thinking.
Another study in the UK highlighted the impact of appearance and personality on how people choose a leader. "We found that voters are not necessarily able to see what politicians are required to do in their day-to-day work and therefore have to rely on characteristics that might seem to matter for leadership but may not be that important," said Madeleine Wyatt from Kent Business School. These findings emphasise how image consultants and PR teams can significantly manipulate the way elections can turn around in a democracy.
The power of imagery works in mysterious ways. For example, if you imagine someone to be a good leader after just a glance, such a richly visualised scenario can influence decisions. Images affect our attitude. But the effect is not the same for everyone. For instance, how believable is fake news also depends if it is delivered with an image. These tactics may mobilise people, but it also has specific ramifications.
Visuals have become fundamental in these times of social media. They stimulate emotions or even outrage to escalate engagement. We may need more clarity on how it influences the spectacle of rhetoric. The resonant power associated with visuals can domineer human reasoning and influence our behaviour sometimes without us knowing.
Contribution by Fazli
