Does Abortion Make Us Safe?: Freakonomics and Reality

>> While I hope a reasonable refutation can be developed

As the late Richard Weaver taught, Ideas have consequences. For a change in behavior such as this reduction in the crime rate, look for a prior change in ideas. Perhaps the answer is no more complicated than a drawing back from the moral anarchism of the 1960s.

The logic is false, though. Colson does a good job explaining it. Did you read the article?

Here's another stat - if you look at the counties that have the highest abortion rate, you also find the highest amount of crime. That alone demonstrates that abortions are not causal to net lower crime.

I've also read a larger portion of Levitt than is presented here. I'm quite open to hear a refutation, but this doesn't refute it. Please don't get me wrong--I doubt the pro-aborts will use this argument except in the sense of a self-satisfied smirk.

Levitt is not really partisan, but his POV is what I'd delicately call "extra-moral."

There have been a lot of eugeniciists in our century, and many of them have been well-trained scientists. Their influence (Planned Parenthood, for one) stays with us to this day. I know pro-aborts who are virulently anti-child. I don't exaggerate when I say I have observed them writing a check to NARAL upon being disturbed at a restaurant by a screaming child... They are quite serious when they assert that some people should not be allowed to be born, and will make a bonafide (if inhumane) argument that feckless women will bring about criminal children. The more education they boast, the more detatched they behave. Having withdrawn their own DNA from the general pool, they don't believe there are many who should be allowed to reproduce.

You write good stuff here, but I still fail to see how Levitt is not refuted. He claims that the murder rate went down because of legalized abortion. His critics have been able to show the following:

1. The murder rate began to decline when the first abortion victims would have been 8 years old if born.

2. The murder rate among "wanted" post-Roe teens was a dramtic increase over the pre-Roe teens.

These directly refute Levitt's contention that the crimes were being committed by kids who would have been killed if abortion were legal. And if you go to the source link and read Sailer's article on Levitt's work, you'll find he rips it to shreds.

Perhaps Levitt isn't partisan, but that doesn't mean he's not full of crap, and very obviously full of crap.

"Early abortions were mainly done on middle class women."

I take it that your use of "early" means "shortly after Roe v. Wade." Based on that assumption, do you have any evidence for your statement?

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