Crime and Abortion

No doubt the most controversial chapter in Freakonomics, reviewed below, concerns the link between Roe vs. Wade and the huge drop in crime that occurred in the 1990's. Leavitt make the case that a large fraction of that drop was due to Roe vs. Wade's legalization of abortion, and the resulting boom in abortions among precisely those women whose children are most likely to go on to criminal careers: poor, uneducated, unmarried and otherwise disadvantaged.

His argument rests on the following points: 1)The chronological correlation - crime started dropping precisely when that cohort of children would have entered their peak criminal years, moreover, in states that legalized abortion about 3-4 years earlier, the decline started about 3-4 years earlier. Similar effect were found in other countries. 2) The observed fact that those women whose children were statistically most likely to become criminals were those who had most of the abortions. 3) The decline in crime was observed almost entirely in the age cohort of the unborn. Other statistical tests are applied and the theory passes those too.

Leavitt makes the point that this effect does not justify abortion, especially to someone who considers abortion itself a crime. On the other hand, he also notes that the results suggest that the women who decided to have abortions made an accurate accessment of their chances of successfully raising a child.

These results are offensive both to some liberals as well as social conservatives, and that makes them controversial. I was initially skeptical, but came away convinced.

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