Legalizing Abortion Decreases the Crime Rate

I apologize if my argument is a little underdeveloped, but it has been busy for me this week. I. Common Sense in Theory Abortion is most likely to lessen the number of poor, unwanted, and mistreated children by teenage, unmarried, poor women. In fact, ""Forty-two percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level ($10,830 for a single woman with no children)" Twenty-seven percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes between 100–199% of the federal poverty level"[1] This means that 69% of the women who have abortions make an annual income of less than $22000. So, the vast majority of women who have abortions are poor. Also, "Moreover, Gruber, Levine, and Staiger [1999, p. 265] conclude that "the average living circumstances of cohorts born immediately after abortion became legalized improved sub- stantially relative to preceding cohorts. " They go on to note that "the marginal children who were not born as a result of abortion legalization would have systematically been born into less favor- able circumstances if the pregnancies had not been terminated: they would have been 60 percent more likely to live in a single- parent household, 50 percent more likely to live in poverty, 45 percent more likely to be in a household collecting welfare, and 40 percent more likely to die during the first year of life. "[2] Poor people are more likely to commit crimes: "Poor people make up the overwhelming majority of those behind bars as 53% of those in prison earned less than $10,000 per year before incarceration. "[3] In fact, the children of women in high-risk groups are more likely to be in prison: "In 1991, 14 percent of prisoners re- ported growing up with neither parent present, and 43 percent reported having only one parent (compared with 3 percent and 24 percent, respectively, for the overall population). Thirty-eight percent of prisoners report that their parents or guardians abused alcohol or drugs; almost one-third of female inmates re- port being sexually abused before the age of eighteen. "[2] By logic, if you reduce the numbers of the highest risk to criminality groups, you are going to have reduced crime. And, most women who seek abortions are poor and in high risk groups. II. Statstics and Proof There is a huge lot of statistics and information to back up this theory. In fact, it is kind of hard to see how this theory can be disproven. I will mainly be talking about the US's crime drop of the 90s here when I reference the "crime drop". II. i. High-Abortion States Have Bigger Crime Decreases while Low-Abortion States Actually INCREASE States that have higher abortion rates recievied most significant drops in crime. "2) After abortion was legalized, the availability of abortions differed dramatically across states. In some states like North Dakota and in parts of the deep South, it was virtually impossible to get an abortion even after Roe v. Wade. If one compares states that had high abortion rates in the mid 1970s to states that had low abortion rates in the mid 1970s, you see the following patterns with crime. For the period from 1973-1988, the two sets of states (high abortion states and low abortion states) have nearly identical crime patterns. Note, that this is a period before the generations exposed to legalized abortion are old enough to do much crime. So this is exactly what the Donohue-Levitt theory predicts. But from the period 1985-1997, when the post Roe cohort is reaching peak crime ages, the high abortion states see a decline in crime of 30% relative to the low abortion states. Our original data ended in 1997. If one updated the study, the results would be similar. )"[4] "The magnitude of the differences in the crime decline between high- and low-abortion states was over 25 percent for homicide, violent crime and property crime. For instance, homicide fell 25.9 percent in high-abortion states between 1985 and 1997 compared to an increase of 4.1 percent in low-abortion states. Panel data estimates confirm the strong negative relationship between lagged abortion and crime. An analysis of arrest rates by age reveal that only arrests of those born after abortion legalization are affected by the law change. "[5] II. ii. Early Action States Have Reductions in Crime Three Years Before the Mean Five states legalized abortion three years before the legalization of abortion and in turn recievied crime drops three years before the rest of the nation. "Five states legalized abortion three years before Roe v. Wade. Crime started falling three years earlier in these states, with property crime (done by younger people) falling before violent crime. "[4] ". .. the cumulative decrease in crime between 1982–1997 for early-legalizing states compared with the rest of the nation is 16.2 percent greater for murder, 30.4 percent greater for violent crime, and 35.3 percent greater for property crime. "[2] II. iii. Real Evidence Is there any real proof? Yes. "An increase in the effective abortion rate of 100 per 1000 live births (the mean effective abortion rate in 1997 for violent crime is 180 with a standard deviation of 96 across states) is associated with a reduc- tion of 12 percent in murder, 13 percent in violent crime, and 9 percent in property crime. "[2] "When we compare arrest rates of people born in the same state, just before and just after abortion legalization, we once again see the identical pattern of lower arrest rates for those born after legalization than before. "[4] III. Internationally The same trend can be seen worldwide. "The evidence from Canada, Australia, and Romania also support the hypothesis that abortion reduces crime. "[4] "Reyes (2002) reports somewhat smaller, but still substantial estimates of abortion on crime using U. S. data. Sen (2002) finds a link between abortion and crime in Canadian data that mirrors the U. S. experience. Pop-Eleches (2002) documents the effects of an unexpected abortion ban imposed in Romania in 1966. "[5] Sources: [1]: . http://www.guttmacher.org... [2]: . http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu... [3]: . http://capaassociation.org... [4]: . http://www.freakonomics.com... [5]: . http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu...