Greetings and salutations. This is Life and Books and Everything. I'm Kevin DeYoung.

Today I want to read an article for a website called Christ Overall. You can go there,

Christoverall.com.

It's a fellowship of pastor theologians dedicated to helping the church see Christ as Lord

and everything else under his feet.

Some friends of mine are a part of this.

It's a group of Reformed Baptists, and they have put out a new

issue online, which is 50 years after Roe v. Wade. And so this is looking at the issue of abortion,

after Dobbs, and remembering the anniversary 1973, 50 years later of Roe v. Wade. They asked me to write an article on the economics of

abortion. I think you'll see what this article is about. It's called the economics of abortion

in one lesson. Henry Hazlitt's classic book, I think you'll see what this article is about. It's called the Economics of Abortion in One Lesson.

Henry Hazlitt's classic book, Economics in One Lesson, from 1946, actually delivered on the audacious title.

Quote, The Art of Economics, wrote Haslett, consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy.

It consists in tracing the consequences of that policy, not merely for one group, but for all groups.

That is to say, the lesson of economics is that we have to look at the effects and the stories that are harder to see,

but no less real and important. Haslett insisted that economics was haunted by the fallacy of

overlooking secondary consequences. In his famous example, Hazlitt imagines a young

hoodlum who leaves a brick or heaves a brick through the window of a baker's shop.

The shopkeeper is understandably furious, but soon the crowd that has gathered begins to postulate that the smashed window may actually be a great blessing. After all, the broken window will mean new business for the glazier, that is a window repairer,

who will then have an extra $250 to spend with other merchants who will, in turn, have more money to spend on other goods and services.

The naughty boy, who seemed at first to be a public menace, turns out to be a public benefactor.

But not so fast, argued Hazlitt.

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