Study links abortion, low crime rate
Updated 11:30 AM ET August 8, 1999
CHICAGO, Aug. 8 (UPI) Two scholars are making the controversial suggestion that
legalizing abortion in the 1970s has contributed to the falling crime rates of the 1990s,
reports the Chicago Tribune.
Their research not yet published in any scholarly journal _ contends that the unwanted
offspring of teenage, poor and minority women were aborted in disproportionately high
numbers in the years just after abortion was legalized, reducing the number of "kids who are
going to lead really tough lives," according to University of Chicago economist Steve Levitt.
In their paper, Levitt and Stanford University law professor John Donohue III argue that
legalized abortion may explain as much as half the overall drop in crime from 1991 to 1997.
Abortion, says Levitt, "provides a way for the would-be mothers of those kids who are
going to lead really tough lives to avoid bringing them into the world. They're the ones who
are most likely to have been unloved by their mothers, to have faced intense poverty, to have
had tough lives."
As evidence for their thesis, the authors cite an earlier fall in crime rates in five states that
legalized abortion three years before the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade
decision. They say places with high abortion rates in the 1970s experienced greater drops in
crime rates in the 1990s, independent of other factors. According to the authors, each 10
percent increase in abortion led to a 1 percent drop in crime in subsequent years.
Their 45-page paper cites studies in eastern Europe and Scandinavia that say children born to
mothers who wanted, but could not get, an abortion were significantly more likely to be
involved in crime.
The authors say their findings do not constitute an endorsement of abortion, and they
concede their research could be interpreted as encouraging abortion among specific groups,
an idea they say they do not advocate.
The paper has been circulated among academics and law-enforcement officials. Most have
been cautiously positive, pointing out that the authors are respected scholars.
One law professor called the paper "striking, original, rigorous and persuasive, although not
conclusive." Another said it would have been more convincing if the authors had also linked
abortion to other social phenomena, such as education and employment rates.
A New York-based research organization, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, says one in four
U.S. pregnancies ends in abortion today as compared to 1980, when the figure was one in
three. Researchers at the institute say greater contraceptive use is largely responsible for the
decline.
They say women who are under age 25, separated, never married, poor or members of a
minority group are roughly twice as likely to have an abortion as other women of
childbearing age. About half of all pregnancies are unintended, and half of those end in
abortion, the institute says.
Cory Richards, vice president of public policy at Guttmacher, said of the paper: "This is not
an argument for abortion per se. This is an argument for women not being forced to have
children they don't want to have. This is making the point that it's not only bad for the
women, but for children and society."
David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to life Committee in Washington,
D.C., described the thesis as bizarre. "I can't believe that any significant percent of the
population would argue that we should kill unborn babies to affect whatever they say is
being affected," he said.
A spokesman for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League declined to
comment until members of the organization had had the opportunity to study the paper.
"No one will like it," said Levitt, but "I don't think it's our job as economists or scientists to
withhold truth because some people are not going to like it. I just think it's important to
understand the impact of social policies."
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