“We are failing to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying . . . a dead weight of human waste . . .an ever-increasing spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.” -Margaret Sanger
I am a huge fan of Levitt and Dubner, authors of Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics. I’ve only read each book twice and recently watched the Freakonomics (2010) movie. (if you own a Netflix account, this movie is a, “must see!”)
However, back as early as 2000, Dr. Levitt and Stamford Law professor John J. Donovan III published a paper, “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.” The Levitt-Donovan thesis, “[L]egalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions…”
Recognizing a 40% drop in murder rates since the end of Prohibition in 1933; The downward spike in property and crimes of violence, of more than 30%, Levitt and Dubner observe that countless articles in academic literature and popular press offered a periphery of explanations, such as, increased use of incarceration, increase in police personnel with improved policing strategies, declines in the crack cocaine trade, a robust economy, and more expenditures on victim advocacy. The initial hypothesis was that, “Crime began to fall roughly 18 years after abortion legalization…”The paper is extensive, (67 pages long) has lots of data and is detailed….all of which is too much to discuss in this single entry.
So…we have this Levitt/Donovan paper from 2000 implying that society has fewer criminals because abortion is now legal and accessible. And of course, with any other peer-reviewed work, this study has a lengthy list of its detractors. At first blush, one might conclude this to be a positive externality. But to qualify such a conclusion one would have to gloss over, perhaps even “ignore” who is getting these abortions.
If we accept the premise that the availability of abortions was an unintended or unanticipated consequence that resulted in crime reduction, it would seem to suggest that the unintended pregnancies terminated were the net product of a whole bunch of people who were irresponsible, ill-prepared for motherhood and unaccountable for their personal behavior. This study would also suggest a high incidence of society being criminally poisoned were it not for these abortions. A pretty grim statement of human nature, I might add.
Perhaps the case is made here that abortion had an impact on reducing crime. But to accept that hypothesis, we also have to recognize the conditions in which the thesis culminated: Deterioration of the intact family; The dumbing down of traditional family values and the amoralizing the definition of, “what a family is.” This becomes clear where such definitions have become politicized…i.e. conservatives advocate for traditional family values while the prune-picking liberals roll their eyes and castigate such concepts with their eugenics-based Margaret Sanger-like platitudes.
Perhaps Levitt and Donovan in their paper got it right..and again in Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics. But despite their data and conclusions we cannot ignore the underlying causalities such as illegitimacy and breakdown of families as the breeding ground for the injection onto society of malcontents.
Donohue, John J. and Levitt, Steven D., The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (2000). Quarterly Journal of Economics. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=174508 or doi:10.2139/ssrn.174508
