But I think Levitt’s main problem is that, while not impossible, it is difficult to prove that those who had abortions were ab initio more likely to give birth to higher risk children than those who didn’t abort. Most likely, a whole host of factors, perhaps including increased access to abortion, played a role in declining crime rates. At any rate, here in the nation’s capital, there has been a steady increase in violent crime over the last couple of years, after a decade of decline. The story is hardly over.

If he doesn’t answer your questions in the linked articles, he would probably be willing to look into it if you emailed him at SteveSlr@aol.com.

No. The theory is that abortion reduced the young people population, which means less crime. Less people = less criminals, not merely ‘violent’ criminals.

2) What makes it seem like a reasonable assumption?

3) Abortion was legal in some states before Roe. Has Steve Sailer, or anyone else, done a state-by-state analysis to see if individual states had large increases in pregnancy after abortion was legalized?

I sometimes think Steve Sailer has interesting things to say…this time isn’t one of them…for HOW can anyone know whether a child would have been CONCEIVED or not????

Legalization of abortion happened in the early 70. The sexual revolution took place in the late 60s/early 70s…so is he saying people would not have CONCEIVED so many children, if abortion was not legal…

Seems a little far fetched.

Actually I find people who tend to use abortion as a method of birth control are not planful enough to make those sorts of calculations before having sex…

It’s like thinking that the death penalty stops someone from murdering…it doesn’t, probably for the same reason. As the sort of person who generally murders someone isn’t thinking about the long-term impact of their actions…they’re generally (not always but generally) impulsive, unstable and not planful people…

Sailer is assuming that an impulsive action involves a lot of planning…

I’ll rephrase what I meant by “reduces the population.” I meant that he assumed that the abortions would have instead been births had Roe v. Wade not happened. Steve Sailer argues that the majority of aborted fetuses would never have been conceived in the first place in the absence of Roe v. Wade Abortions of fetuses that would not have been conceived without Roe v. Wade are a wash, statistically. An increase in the number of abortions of fetuses who would be unwanted, unappreciated, unafforded, or neglected had they been born only reduces the number of unwanted, etc. children if those children would have still been conceived in the absence of Roe v. Wade.

I’m no fan of Levitt’s claim on empirical or moral grounds (for the racial undertones you mention) but I don’ t think it succeeds or fails on the grounds of the general population rate. The logic is that the children most likely to be unwanted, unappreciated, unafforded, neglected, etc. weren’t born, and they are the ones most likely to commit crimes. This doesn’t say anything about the population trends in general, as the theory only applies to a small subset of the population.

The problem with the abortion-cuts-crime theory (which is, at base, the theory that abortion reduced the black population, who are more likely to be violent criminals - considering the fact that the black abortion rate is much higher than the white abortion rate, it is difficult to deny that this is the undertone of the theory) is that:
(a) It assumes that abortion greatly reduced the population. In fact, most of the evidence suggests that after the legalization of abortion, people became more careless with sex; conceptions skyrocketed after Roe v. Wade while births declined only about 5-6%; most of the abortions pobably would not have been conceived in the first place if abortion has not been available.
(b) It assumes that the people who were the parents most likely to give birth to future criminals were the ones having the most abortions. In fact, it eems more likely that the people having abortions were those with hopes of joining the middle class. Those who were totally irresponsible parents often are people who just let s**t happen, and who might not bother geting an abortion. In fact, abortion may have had a dysgenic rather than eugenic effect on the black population, by “hollowing out” the middle class.

keep in mind, if they happened to have any Jews around, Jews get priority. it’s a last in, first out sort of thing.

You know, when they start saying knee-jerk stuff about how the problem is Inga Scott’s parenting of Ja’eisha. Tying such dire predictions of social decay to divorce and single motherhood seemed credible in the 1970s and 1980s. But a funny

Great article, though, thanks for posting.