by Steve Sailer
[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Steve Sailer is a national correspondent
for
United Press International.]
 By
legalizing abortion in 1973, did the Supreme Court also drive down the
American crime rate during the later Nineties? Professors Steven D.
Levitt of the U. of Chicago and John J. Donohue III of Stanford
think so. In next month's Quarterly Journal of Economics, they argue
that aborting
millions of "unwanted" fetuses in the Seventies meant that the
"wanted" babies who were allowed to be born were less likely
to grow up to be vicious thugs in the Nineties. Thus, they attribute up
to half of the recent sharp fall in crime to legal abortion.
This is a brave argument. It embarrasses Pro-Choicers, who don't want
public discussion of one reason some people support legal abortion: they
see it as "pre-natal capital punishment," a way to eugenically
cull "undesirables." Since blacks undergo three times as many
abortions as
whites per capita, this reason for backing legal abortion is
particularly appealing to unreligious white racists.
Levitt and Donohue's idea also outrages Pro-Lifers, who complain that
King Herod used similar logic in ordering the slaughter of thousands of
babies in his unsuccessful attempt to eliminate the threat posed to his
rule by
the infant Jesus.
Of course, as social scientists, Levitt and Donohue have an obligation
to follow the truth wherever it may lead them. Yet, just because Levitt
and Donohue's theory is brave doesn't mean it's true.
When word leaked out in 1999 that the two scholars were airing their
theory in
academic seminars, many commentators reacted emotionally. Since
moralizing is easy, while analyzing is hard, almost all pundits merely
assumed that Levitt and Donohue's highly statistical 63 page preliminary
paper was correct, and then went on to chatter about the Meaning of It
All.
After all, the theory rests on two plausible-sounding ideas. First,
"unwanted" fetuses are presumably more likely to commit
crimes when they grow up, so allowing their mothers to get rid of them
ought to eventually reduce crime.
Yet, the evidence for this is remarkably shaky. In fact, Levitt and
Donohue mention evidence suggesting that 60%-75% of all fetuses aborted
in the Seventies would never have been conceived without legal abortion
having lowered the costs of careless conceptions.
Roe v. Wade did not reduce the
rate of illegitimacy, which is widely believed to contribute to crime.
Indeed, illegitimacy shot upwards in a straight line from 5% in 1962 to
33% of babies born today. The legalization of abortion had no
visible affect whatsoever on this disastrous trend. Only in the more
conservative cultural climate of the late Nineties did the illegitimacy
rate start to plateau - and at the same time the number of abortions
dipped as well.
 Second,
Levitt and Donohue point out that the crime rate started to fall about
18-20 years after Roe v. Wade in 1973. However, this reasoning also
implies that these same individuals born soon after 1973 should have
grown
up to be especially law-abiding teens in the early Nineties. Did they?
No. Instead, this generation
born after Roe v. Wade went on the worst youth murder spree in American
history. According to FBI statistics, the murder rate in 1993 for 14-17
years olds (who were born in the high abortion years of 1975-1979) was a
horrifying 3.6 times higher than that of the kids who were 14-17 years
old in 1984 (who were born in the pre-legalization years of 1966-1970).
In dramatic contrast, over the same time span the murder rate for those
25 and over (all born before legalization) dropped 6%.
What about black male youths
alone? Levitt and Donohue's theory suggests that their behavior should
have "benefited" more that whites' behavior from abortion.
Instead, their murder rate grew an apocalyptic 5.1 times
from 1984 to 1993.
Clearly, whatever effect abortion had on the murder rate was utterly
swamped by the crack cocaine wars. Levitt emailed to me, "There is
little doubt that crack is the primary force responsible for the
unprecedented
spike in youth homicide in the late 1980s, especially among African-
Americans."
Levitt implicitly raises an interesting question by pointing out,
"In addition, the high abortion places like New York and California
tended to have a bigger crack problem, and tended to have crack arrive
earlier." So, why did cities with lots of legal abortions in the
Seventies have lots of crack murders fourteen to seventeen years later?
The most obvious answer is that
the liberal politics and permissive social attitudes that made legal
abortion popular in places like New York City, Los Angeles, and
Washington D.C. also contributed to the crack epidemic.
For example, D.C. enjoyed both the highest abortion rate in the U.S.
and, in later years, a popular mayor, Marion Barry, who was himself a
crackhead.
But it's also possible that legal abortion itself helped fuel the
carnage of the crack years. Why
did both the abortion rate and illegitimacy rate soar during the
Seventies? One answer might be that legalizing abortion
finished off the traditional shotgun wedding. Earlier, the Pill had
shifted responsibility for not getting pregnant from the boyfriend to
the girlfriend. Then, legal abortion relieved the impregnating boyfriend
of the customary duty of making an honest woman out of his girlfriend.
More speculatively, but also more frighteningly, the revolution in
social attitudes that excused terminating the unborn may also have
helped persuade violent youths that they could be excused for
terminating the born. |
