Is there a link between abortion and crime rate?

Dave Lucas
Published: March 9, 2008

Gary Jacobsen’s article “The Crime Rate is Falling. Why?” invites explanations for a national violent crime rate that has supposedly been “in a freefall since about 1994.”

In recent news, the Pew Center for the States reported more than one percent of U.S. adults are behind bars, that the U.S. has more adults in prison than any other country, and that 1 in 37 U.S. adults (5.6 million) have been incarcerated at some time in their life.

The tough-on-crime Republican Congress elected in 1994 may have started this cycle.

Another recent news story “IPod link to violent crime eyed” (Washington Times March 5) drew on the results of an Urban Institute study: “Nationwide, the rate of violent crimes jumped in 2005, the same year IPod sales soared…” Is a new bumper sticker, “Guns don’t cause crime, IPods do,” in the making?

A common error in reading statistical data is to assume correlations imply cause and effect, but asserting cause and effect between two happenstance factors is usually a function of someone’s personal beliefs. If storks in the zoo increase in perfect synch with human births in a city, one might be causing the other, but maybe not.

Jacobsen’s article brings up Steven Levitt’s “Freakonomics” claim that a rise in abortions after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton in 1973 led to a drop in crime in the 1990’s. A number of scholars as diverse as James Q. Wilson and John Lott have refuted Levitt’s methodology.  Besides, the crime rate and the abortion rate have been tracking downward together for some time: Cause and effect, or no relationship?

Statistics aside, Mother Teresa’s 1994 National Prayer Breakfast speech included this wise observation about the link between abortion and crime: “If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other? … Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want.”

DAVE LUCAS

Manassas