Crime and Abortion
By Albert B. Kelly
When it comes to the issue of crime and the way we talk
about it, we’re in a strange place. For a few years now, we’ve been hearing a
lot statistics that tell us that the crime rate nationally and in almost every
single community, is as low as its been in decades. Yet for all of that, there
is the perception that the crime rate has never been higher.
There may be several reasons for this disconnect but if I
had to venture a guess, one reason is because some politicians can never go
wrong in scaring the hell out of everyone with scenarios about crime and then running
on a “tough on crime” platform- it’s a winner every time. The other reason for
this perception of crime being out of control may simply be the omnipresent power
of social media with instant audio, video, and reactions to things we couldn’t
have consumed a generation ago.
But for all of the discussion about crime and why it has
dropped to historic lows, there is something often overlooked by the public that
is just as startling and it’s the apparent connection between legalized abortion
and the drop in crime. In 2001, economists Steve Levitt and John Donohue
published a paper to the effect that legalized abortion from Roe V Wade onward (1973)
accounted for roughly half the drop in crime nationwide a generation later. In 2005,
Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner published the book Freakonomics which covered this subject for a mass audience.
They point out that between 1991 and 2001, violent crime in
the country fell more than 30% (it’s still falling). While others attributed the
crime drop to the “Broken Windows” theory of policing, tougher laws, and longer
sentences; Levitt and Donahue arrived at their theory by considering stats on the
U.S population after Roe V Wade. At its peak, there were 1.5 million abortions
versus 4 million births. More importantly, they factored in “unwantedness”
meaning that those not born, had they actually come into the world, would have
been unwanted with all that being unwanted implies.
It’s not a far leap to say that unwanted children are far
more likely to become disconnected, angry, anti-social, criminally-inclined adults
than not. If you recall, back in the 80’s and early 90’s, society was talking
about “super-predators” which were teens and younger twenty-somethings that had
no regard for life or property- the unwanted.
As a side note, this idea of the young super-predator is largely how we justify
sentencing children as adults.
Yet, when both the 2001 research paper and Freakonomics suggested the connection
between legalized abortion and the huge drop in crime, everyone was upset. Those
on the right assumed the authors were arguing for the upside of abortion while
those on the left assumed that the authors were saying all those unlived lives
would have been criminals with all the racial implications that go with it –an
argument for eugenics. The authors were not advocating any position, but simply
connecting choices made by women as a result of Roe V. Wade and the impact of
those choices on crime decades later.
The authors revisit this issue in the Podcast “Freakonomics”
and if you’re interested, you can listen to it by visiting (http://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion/).
They go into a lot more detail while revisiting their findings with 18 years of
perspective.
I highlight the research because we live at a time when many
are going to extraordinary lengths in the courts and elsewhere to limit or
eliminate the right of women to safely and legally terminate a pregnancy.
Regardless of how we feel morally about the issue, policy and court decisions will
have implications and outcomes that will demand our attention.
Some women choose to terminate pregnancies because they conclude
that they can’t support a child in the many ways necessary to nurture them toward
stable well-adjusted adult lives. Setting moral judgements aside for the
moment, should we lose or eliminate choice, are we prepared as a society to do
what is necessary to support and empower these potentially unwanted lives? And
if we’re not, is it possible that this historic drop in crime could reverse in
the years ahead so that we’ll again have crime rates as high as they were in
the “super-predator” days?
I don’t know the answer to these questions, but we’ve got a
lot to consider as a society because there will be a cost either way.