The Social Reprecussions of Abortion

Abortion is a very controversial issue. There are people on both sides that feel strongly about it. Recently there was an article written in Newsweek discussing abortion and how Americans tend to feel about it.

It isn’t so much this article that poses an economic question for me. What I would like to discuss here is an observation that I read about over winter break; something this article reminded me of. In the book entitled Freakonomics: A Rouge Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt and Stephan J. Dubner claim that the decrease in crime rate in the 1990’s was partially caused by Supreme Court Decision in Roe vs. Wade allowing women to have abortions. Their argument was somewhere along the lines of that most of the women who choose to have abortions are low income, low educated, or simply do not want a child. Being raised by a mother like this has been found to increase the chance that the child will have limited opportunities and will have an increased likelihood of turning to crime. Therefore, by allowing these women to have abortions, the crimes these children would have committed aren’t being committed; which in turn led to a reduced crime rate for the rest of society.

As I read this a couple of months ago it intrigued me and I was wondering what others thought about it?