Study Links Dip in Crime to Abortions

An unpublished study circulating among economists and criminal-law experts suggests that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s has contributed to a drop in crime, the Chicago Tribune reported. Several academics and lawyers called the research compelling and provocative, but others are skeptical. The researchers argue that many women whose children would have been most likely to commit crimes as young adults instead chose to abort their pregnancies. Because of that, a disproportionate number of would-be criminals in the 1990s were not born in the 1970s. Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and John Donohue III, a Stanford University law professor, said their analysis suggests that legalized abortion may account for as much as half the overall crime drop in the U.S. from 1991 to 1997.