Does abortion lower the crime rate?

In the mid 90’s, many people were worried about the crime rate.  People were saying by 2000, it was going to be a “bloodbath.”  However, the exact opposite happened, crime rate went down.  Many thought it was because of: innovative policing strategies, increased reliance on prisons, changes in crack and other drug markets, aging of the population, tougher gun control laws, strong economy, increased number of police, etc.  However, when you look at these reasons, they seem to be just wishful thinking.  (I can go into how they are not, but I just don’t have the time).

How can we tell if the abortion crime link is a case of causality?  Well, when a child is aborted, that usually means that the mother does not want the child, feels as though it will not grow up in a good household, or simply she feels she cannot care for it.  If that child is forced to grow up in this unloving household, single mother/poor, statistically that child has a greater chance of going to crime when he grows up.

In the first year in the passing of Roe v. Wade, some 750,000 women had abortions (1 abortion for every 4 births).  By 1980, the numbers 1.6 million (1:2.25)  Thus, by the time 1995 rolled around, the previous generations where abortion was illegal, grew up, and the generation where abortion was legal came in.

Now this may seem like a coincidence, but look at the states where abortion was LEGAL before the senate passed a nation wide law.  In New York, California, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, a woman could get an abortion 2 years before the rest of the nation, and indeed those states saw crime begin to fall earlier than the other 45 states.  Between 1988 and 1994, violent crime in the early states fell 13% compared to other states.  Between 1994 and 1997 their murder rates fell about 23% more than those of other states.

To further push the correlation, sure enough the sates with the highest abortion rates in the 1970’s experienced the greatest crime drips in the 1990’s.  Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30% drop in crime relative to ones with low abortion rates.

Moreover, there was no link between a given states abortion rate and its crime rate before the late 1980s, then the first cohort affected by legalized abortion was reaching its criminal prime, which is yet another indication that Roe v. Wade was indeed the event that tipped the crime scale. 

what the link between abortion and crime does say is this: when the government gives a woman the opportunity to make her own decisions about abortion, she generally does a good job of figuring out if she is in a position to raise the baby well. If she decides she can't, she often chooses the abortion.

It is actually very logical that legalizing abortion would decrease crime while illegalizing abortion would have the increase in crime rate.  This is simply because if abortion would be illegal all the abortions would be crimes.  Therfore legalizing would make both the doctors performing the abortions non criminals, and the soon-not-to-be mothers not criminals.  decreasing cime and criminal rates overall.

      However, seriously, generation to generation crime tends to be proportional to the population overall, barring any political or social program that creates more crime this is true.  an example of this would be prohibition saw a huge increase in crime rate that came from all those drinkers suddenly being criminals.  That showed a substanitial increase for that generation for crime than for the previous one.  however if you compare each generation to the generation to the generation just before and just after it, crime rate is relatively constant in reference to population, although peeks of overcrowding in areas create crime problems in those ares, but rarely is there something that spreads across a whold nation crime wise.  There are other things involved like technology developing to deter crime easier and catch criminals easier, but these are those social and politial changes previously mentioned that must be delt with.  rises and falls in crime rate typically happen over time as socieity changes.  The middle ages had a horrible crime rate.  also long term trends only indicate a sharp dropping in US crime rate over the past 200 years and only a slight rise over the past 40.
        So locially abortion would simply decrease the the growth in population.   So if it slowed the growth in the crowded areas it would have a decreasing effect on crime.  however overall it really wouldn't decrease crime any in proportion to population.