I’m fully against all forms of abortion, but Steven Levitt does make an excellent case for the theory that abortion does ultimately lower violent crime rates. His analysis of data seemed spot on, yet in his defense, I really don’t think he was advocating it - just making a point about unintended consequences. I’ll be really curious how this new book treats the data.
Lots of abortions happened. Violent crime rates went down 15 to 20 years later.
The problem with this analysis is that a whole lot of other things also happened. Isolating the effects of abortion as compared to the other huge changes in our society during this period seems to me to be an insurmountable challenge.
I wasn’t convinced by Leavitt’s hypothesis. He says abortion reduces the number of unwanted, illegitimate children who get a bad start in life. It is quite possible that abortion has actually increased the number of children conceived in reckless acts and born to single mothers and getting a bad start in life by changing social expectations and sexual morality. Certainly the illegitimacy rate has gone up since abortion was legalized and crimes of abuse against children have gone up.
Mrs VS