Are abortion rates and crime rates linked?
Economist Steven Levitt of Stanford Law School and co-author John Donhue III of the University of Chicago have circulated an unpublished report called “Legalized Abortion and Crime.” It suggests that the legalization of abortion might have indirectly caused the lowering of crime rates which have been observed during the 1970’s. Their reasoning was that abortions prevented the birth of many people who would have been born into poverty and thus be more likely to commit crimes. They suggest that abortion could be responsible for about half of the drop in crime rates since 1991. Levitt acknowledges that this conclusion is mainly “conjecture” and that it could “never be proven to the degree of certainty that a scientist might demand.” Their data showed that those states that legalized abortion prior to 1973 had their crime rates drop sooner than other states. States with very high rates of abortion after 1973 tended to “have particularly high drops in crime during the 1990’s.” 2 Abortions b
