In it, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and Stanford University Law School professor John Donohue III argue that the decrease in crime during the 1990s can be attributed to abortion, which has been legal since 1974.
Ever since the paper's early media leaks last year, pro-lifers have excoriated its logic and assumptions. But now that the paper finally has been published (by Harvard, no less!), its findings will soon find a place in the annals of junk science. The paper's conclusions are simply false and it's not just pro-life activists who are saying so. David Murray, a statistician at the Statistical Assessment Service, recently told Foxnews.com that Levitt and Donahue “didn't ask the right question and as soon as you ask the right question the effect they think they're seeing disappears and the picture becomes much more obscure, much more cloudy.” Young males between 17 and 25 commit the majority of crimes. According to Murray, if abortion did reduce crime, rates would have first dropped among young people. They haven't.
Murray's contention finds strength in a new study from researchers John R. Lott Jr. of Yale and John Whitley of the University of Adelaide (Australia). “There are many factors that reduce murder rates, but the legalization of abortion is not one of them,” Lott and Whitley conclude in “Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births.” They find that legal abortion might have actually increased crime rates. Another study deflating the abortion-crime correlation, by Baruch economist Ted Joyce, argues that the drop in crime has been due to a decline in the popularity of crack cocaine. A professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University, James Alan Fox, has dubbed the Donohue-Levitt conclusions “voodoo econometrics”; they are “going so far out on a limb that the limb has cracked off underneath them,” said Fox.
Nonetheless, Levitt (who has admitted to having “moral qualms” over abortion) and Donahue (who endorses the Dutch approach on abortion) sweep aside most of the criticism of their findings with breezy indifference. Says Levitt: “The Joyce one actually does some reasonable things and supports our findings for the most part, but he doesn't seem to understand that. The Lott one is just garbage.” He adds, “I am still waiting to hear a reasonable criticism of our findings.”
Despite its eugenic undertones, the Levitt-Donahue research has been embraced by some in the abortion industry. In a guest Op-Ed last month in the Canadian National Post titled “It's Better for Us That They Died,” leading abortionist Henry Morgentaler praises the Levitt-Donahue study, declaring moral vindication, and arguing that this is what he had been saying for decades. (If women only exercised their choice, we'd have fewer criminals in our midst!)
In the wake of the furor kicked up by this study, however, the blindingly obvious response, is, of course: “Who cares?” Even if the Levitt-Donahue findings were true, there shouldn't be any moral debate here. No matter what some Ivy League econometric model might say, all victims of choice are equally innocent, equally entitled to life and love and nurturing. No amount of social-science research will change that.
(This article is reprinted with permission from National Review Online.)
