This argument seems to add a wheel that doesn't turn the mechanism. It is now accepted wisdom among demographers that (a) 18-25 year old males commit a disproportionate amount of crimes and (b) that the shrinking of that age group has caused a lot of the recent drop in crime. So it is not a leap to say that this in turn was caused by a fall in the birth rate 18-25 years earlier. But then everything that caused the birth rate drop should get the credit equally, from diaphragms to a taste for smaller families. There is no justification for breaking out abortion. On the contrary, my impression is that many more would-be babies are contracepted than aborted. But even if you made a stock racist demonizing assumption, like that poor single women are too dumb to use contraception, and for that reason depended on abortion, the policy prescription would be the same: Free contraception on demand! Lower crime by increasing contraception among the poor!
Mind you, that wouldn't be my slogan -- I don't want to reinvigorate liberalism by injecting it with eugenics. I'm just saying that, even in its own terms, the justification for highlighting abortion as a causal or policy factor evades me.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com