Mona Charen

A 1999 study concluded that legalized abortion has lowered the U.S. crime rate because fewer unwanted children— people who are more likely to become criminals—are being born. This study is flawed, contends syndicated columnist Mona Charen in the following viewpoint. Although it is true that overall crime rates have dropped, a closer look at statistics actually reveals a higher murder rate among people who were born in the first few years after abortion was legalized. It is more likely that the rise and fall of the crack cocaine epidemic—not abortion—is responsible for the apparent decrease in crime since the early 1990s, Charen concludes.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Steve Sailer, cited by the author, which generation is responsible for the biggest youth crime rampage in U.S. history"
2. By how much did the youth murder rate increase for black males born between 1975 and 1979, according to the author"
3. In what way might abortion actually cause an increase in crime, in Charen’s opinion"

Everyone has heard by now of the study purporting to show that legalized abortion has been at least partly responsible for the drop in crime we have been experiencing nationwide. Initial reaction ranged from cautious (from those who believe it) to contemptuous (from those who don’t). Could it be, many wondered, that Steve Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue III of Stanford are recommending prenatal capital punishment"

If we can take them at their word, they were simply searching for truth. The question is: Does the study illuminate the drop in crime, or simply play upon unspoken prejudices in the minds of most educated people? Steve Sailer makes an extremely persuasive case in the online magazine Slate (the liveliest site on the Internet) that the study is quite flawed.

Crime Rates

Levitt and Donohue began with a postulate: 1) that legalized abortion results, by definition, in fewer unwanted babies being born, and 2) that since unwanted children are more likely to grow up to be criminals than others—an assumption bolstered by plenty of data—then abortion should lead to lower crime rates.

They tested this hypothesis by examining crime rates in the years after Roe vs. Wade became law. Eighteen years after Roe, they conclude, crime began to drop. Moreover, in the five states that legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe, crime rates began to fall three years earlier. Levitt and Donohue further found that those states that had high abortion rates in the mid-1970s experienced greater decreases in crime in the 1990s than states that had low abortion rates in the 1970s.

Not so fast, says Sailer, businessman, gadfly and intellectual jack-of-all-trades. If Levitt and Donohue are correct, the kids who managed to get born despite legalized abortion should have been more law-abiding than previous generations. Instead, they launched the greatest youth crime spree in American history. According to FBI statistics, the murder rate for 1993’s crop of 14- to 17-year-olds (who were born in the freely available abortion years of 1975 to 1979) was 3.6 times that of the children born between 1966 and 1970 (pre- Roe).

If abortion reduces crime, Sailer continues, then the lower crime rates should have shown up first among the youngest (the wanted babies). But instead, the crime rate drop began among those ages 35 to 49.

The 1980s Crack Epidemic

The 800-pound gorilla that Levitt and Donohue ignore, Sailer insists, is the crack epidemic that transformed urban neighborhoods in the 1980s. Looking at black males born between 1975 and 1979, Sailer notes that their youth murder rate grew 5.1 times. And although black women have abortions at three times the rate of white women, the black juvenile murder rate grew relative to the white rate, from five times worse in 1984 to 11 times worse in 1993.

Abortion and Crime

It's possible that legalized abortion increased crime by contributing to family breakdown. In a 1996 study, economists George Akerlof of the Brookings Institution and his wife, Janet Yellen, until recently the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, argued that Roe v. Wade and contraception had helped cause the explosion of single-parent families. Men felt less responsible for the children they fathered, because women could avoid or abort pregnancies. “Shotgun marriages” virtually vanished.

The truth is that we don’t know the truth. Even if John Donohue and Steven Levitt [the researchers who found a possible link between abortion and lower crime rates] are correct, the abortion debate should remain one of moral values. There are other ways to avoid unwanted children: abstinence, birth control. But it’s delusional to pretend that something as common as abortion is without social consequences.

Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, September 6, 1999.

It was the waxing and waning of the crack epidemic— including better policing, more prisoners, more deaths and more youths in wheelchairs—that accounts for the rise and fall of crime, Sailer believes. A large percentage of the national statistics come from just a few large states, including New York and California, which legalized abortion early but also experienced the worst of the crack epidemic. The good news is that youths born in the early 1980s have shown the biggest decline in murder. Perhaps seeing their older brothers maimed and killed has scared them straight.

Sailer contends that many abortion advocates secretly believe that undesirable people are aborted. He offers a different hypothesis. Suppose that sober, upstanding middle-class blacks are having the abortions, while drug-addicted, disorganized, black mothers are not? Suppose further that legalization of abortion has made underclass women even more careless about birth control than they were pre-Roe (Levitt and Donohue’s study itself suggests that up to 75 percent of fetuses aborted in the 1970s would never had been conceived without Roe). In that case, Sailer contends, the sheer number of unwanted babies conceived might overwhelm the supposed “beneficial” effect of free abortion.

Finally, two capping arguments: Abortion-on-demand spelled the end of the shotgun wedding and, derivatively, of male responsibility. Since Roe, both abortion and illegitimacy have soared, with doleful effects on crime. And it is just possible, in a culture that condones the rampant destruction of unborn babies, that youngsters fail to see the moral outrage of shooting born ones.