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Thursday May 17, 2001
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STUDY LINKING ABORTION AND LOWER CRIME RATES PUBLISHED
CHICAGO, May 17, 2001 (LSN.ca) - A controversial study claiming that legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime has been published in the May issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The claim in "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime" by John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt, researchers at Stanford Law School and the University of Chicago respectively, follows the logic of abortionist Henry Morgentaler who has long held that "wanted" children are far less likely to engage in crime and that abortion has prevented the births of many "unwanted" potential criminals.
The study raised concerns of racism as it suggested that a majority of blacks commit crimes and a majority of black women have abortions, thus the conditions are perfect for crime reduction:
"Fertility declines for black women are three times greater than for whites (12 percent compared to 4 percent). Given that homicide rates of black youths are roughly nine times higher than those of white youths, racial differences in the fertility effects of abortion are likely to translate into greater homicide reductions. Under the assumption that those black and white births eliminated by legalized abortion would have experienced the average criminal propensities of their respective races, then the predicted reduction in homicide is 8.9 percent. In other words, taking into account differential abortion rates by race raises the predicted impact of abortion legalization on homicide from 5.4 percent to 8.9 percent."
Such racist rhetoric is not new among the proponents of abortion. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger worked with a similar hypothesis as she promoted her "Negro Project" designed to eliminate members of what she called an "inferior race."
Writer Sue Widemark points out that the Donohue and Levitt study has a direct tie to Planned Parenthood. A footnote in the study paper states that: "In our analysis we use Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) data on abortions." Widemark points out that AGI is the research arm of Planned Parenthood. Thus, says Widemark, "Old ideas perpetuated by Margaret Sanger about how the poor and non-white children are usually the ones who make trouble in society are supported by erroneous incomplete data and wrapped in a new cloak."
Pointing out the insanity of the study's assumptions, Joe Scheidler, executive director of the Pro Life Action League, told the National Post, "There was a lot less crime in Germany by the Jews during the Holocaust, too. I mean, that's brilliant." Another commentator in the Post, David Murray, the director of the Statistical Assessment Service, pointed out the fallacy of using the correlational data to suggest causality.
David Murray, the director of the Statistical Assessment Service, a non-partisan think-tank in Washington, said the study poses an intriguing argument, but does not stand up to scrutiny. He said using the authors' hypothesis, crime rates in other countries with abortion access should have seen a similar dip in crime . . . the country with the highest abortion rate in the world is Russia. It should be a worker's paradise of safety by their argument, Well, they've got all kinds of crises happening and it's not a safe place."
See the study paper on line at:
http://www.cnsnews.com/pdf/nber.pdf
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