Abortion Reduces Crime

Abstract No one is certain why crime rates have plummeted in the United States over the last decade. But that fact has not prevented politicians from taking credit for the downturn. The newest theory about why crime is down, however, put forward in a report by two highly regarded economists, is drawing both outrage and intense debate. The economists claim that abortion may prevent the birth of unwanted children, who would have received very little attention from their parents and therefore would have higher probability of committing crime.

In the report, Dr. John J. Donohue 3d of Stanford Law School and Dr. Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago contend that a large share of the drop in crime in the 1990's -- perhaps as much as half -- can be attributed to the sharp increase in abortions after the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Fewer crimes are being committed now, the researchers say, because many of the children who might have grown up to commit those crimes were never born. Within a few years of the Roe v. Wade decision, which established a constitutional right to abortion, up to a quarter of pregnancies ended in abortion, statistics show. Dr. Donohue and Dr. Levitt base their thesis on economic analyses of crime rates from 1985 to 1997, examined as a function of abortion rates two decades before.

The timing of the decline in crime, they found, coincided with the period when children born shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision would be reaching the late teen-age years -- the peak ages for criminal activity. States that were the first to legalize abortion, Dr. Donohue and Dr. Levitt found, including New York, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, were also the first to experience a decrease in crime. For example, in states that legalized abortion in 1969 or 1970, the researchers found, the cumulative decrease in crime from 1982 to 1997 was greater than for the rest of the nation. The decrease in murder was 16.2 percent greater, the decrease in violent crime over all was 34.4 percent greater, and the decrease in property crime was 35.3 percent greater.

Also, states with the highest abortion rates, the researchers found, had larger reductions in crime than states with low abortion rates. The most likely explanation for these findings, the researchers assert, is that abortion has occurred selectively, decreasing the number of children likely to commit crimes as adults.