Something I didn't see in any of the papers I read from this country...
Abortions �cut crime rate in America�The Times of London
August 10, 1999 THE drop in US crime in the 1990s is directly linked to
legalised abortion in the 1970s, according to a highly controversial new
study claiming that the pool of potential law-breakers has been radically
reduced because young, poor, minority women were able toterminate their
pregnancies. Steven Levitt, an economist at the University ofChicago, and
John Donohue, a law professor at Stanford University, claim that as much as
half of the overall reduction in crime in the US between 1991 and 1997 can
be explained by abortion patterns. Their unpublished study,Legalised
Abortion and Crime, found that unwanted children - a section ofsociety
more likely to resort to crime in young adulthood - were abortedat
disproportionately higher rates by teenagers, the poor andminorities in the
1970s, eliminating many potential criminals in this decade.The
research, currently circulating among sociologists andcriminologists,
supports the idea that abortion �provides a way for the mothersof those kids
who are going to lead really tough lives to avoid bringingthem into the
world�, Mr Levitt told the Chicago Tribune. �They�re theones who are most
likely to have been unloved by their mothers, to have faced intense poverty,
to have had tough lives.� The researchers are braced for an academic
firestorm. The thesis that crime has fallen because fewer unwanted poor
minority children have been born to teenage mothers islikely to be
attacked by some critics as disguised racial eugenics, andanti-abortion
groups have also balked at findings which some will see as a justification
for abortion. �I don�t think it�s our job as economists and scientists to
withhold truth because some people are not going to like it,� MrLevitt said.
But anti-abortion campaigners described the findings as�bizarre�.�You mean
killing unborn babies in the Seventies led people inthe Nineties to do less
shoplifting?� David O�Steen, the executive director of the National Right to
Life Committee, said. The study has been greeted enthusiastically by some.
�This is a striking, original,rigorous and persuasive - although not
conclusive - demonstration of the commonsense point that unwanted children
are quite likely not to turn out to be the best citizens,� Judge Richard
Posner, chief judge of the USCourt of Appeal in Chicago, was quoted as
saying. The steep drop in US crime came approximately 20 years after the US
Supreme Court legalised abortion, and the five states which allowed abortion
before the ruling experienced an
earlier reduction in crime, according to the study. The researchers also
found that areas of the US with the highest abortion rates have generally
witnessed a steeper reduction in crime. A new survey released this week
cites an improved economy and the �cultural dominance� of thebaby-boomer
generation as decisive factors in the decline of crime. A healthier economy
has caused potential criminals to seek honest employment,according to the
new report for the American Sociological Association, but with baby-boomers
now heading almost four in every ten American households thechange in crime
statistics may reflect the emergence of a new demographic and moral pattern.
Baby-boomers are often less materialist with a tendencytowards
�greater civility�, the study found. From Ben Macintyre in washington
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