In the 1960s and 1970s, abortion advocates used a variety of
arguments to advance their cause. Some emphasized women’s liberty and
autonomy. Others tried to persuade people that easy access to abortion
would benefit society as a whole. Consider just two representative
quotations:
“A policy that makes contraception and
abortion freely available will greatly reduce the number of unwanted
children, and thereby curb the tragic rise of child abuse in our
country.” (NARAL, 1978)
“The impact of the abortion revolution
may be too vast to assess immediately. It should usher in an era when
every child will be wanted, loved, and properly cared for.” (NARAL
co-founder Larry Lader, 1974)
Legal abortion, advocates argued, would result in fewer
out-of-wedlock births and less child abuse, and would ensure that every
child was wanted. Over time, these arguments lost credibility because
neither out-of-wedlock births nor child abuse was decreasing.
In the early 2000s, academics Steven Levitt (University of Chicago) and John Donohue (Yale University) published a study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, titled “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime,”
claiming that legal abortion unexpectedly lowered crime rates in many
American cities during the 1990s. Groups supporting abortion rights
generally distanced themselves from this argument, fearing its eugenic
implications. Though the findings have received some widespread
credibility because of Levitt’s popular book Freakonomics, they have been much criticized by other academics.
In this essay I show that easy access to abortion during the past forty years has not benefited society as a whole. Legal abortion has not reduced out-of-wedlock births, child abuse, or crime rates.
Abortion and Out-of-Wedlock Births
After the Roe v. Wade decision, the out-of-wedlock
birthrate continued to rise, even though the number of abortions
increased substantially. At first glance, this seems somewhat
surprising. When abortion became legal, a sexually active woman who did
not want to bear children had the option of terminating her pregnancy.
But legal abortion dramatically changed social and sexual mores. When
abortion became easily available as a back-up option, women as well as
men became less careful about using contraceptives and more likely to
engage in pre- and extra-marital sex. This increase in sex outside
marriage further weakened social taboos regarding sex before
marriage—resulting in even more sexual activity. Men who impregnated
women faced considerably less social pressure to marry.
Indeed, Donohue has observed that after Roe v. Wade,
conceptions increased by 30 percent. Of course, a higher percentage of
these conceptions were aborted. However, the increase in the incidence
of abortion failed to offset this increase in conceptions. As such, the
out-of-wedlock birthrate continued to climb.
Steve Sailer, "Did Legalizing Abortion Cut Crime?" December 2005.
Abortion and Child Abuse
Abortion advocates frequently argued that legal abortion would
decrease child abuse. Children who were wanted, they claimed, would be
less likely to suffer from abuse than those who were unwanted. But
social science data suggest that this logic is flawed. A landmark study
of 674 abused children by Edward Lenoski (University of Southern
California) found that 91 percent of the parents admitted that they
wanted the child they had abused. A 2005 study by Priscilla Coleman
(Bowling Green University) showed that women who obtained abortions were 144 percent more likely to abuse their own children.
At a more theoretical level, Dr. Philip G. Ney, head of the
Department of Psychiatry at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Canada, has
outlined why abortion can lead directly to child abuse.
1. Abortion decreases an individual's
instinctual restraint against the occasional rage felt toward those
dependent on his or her care.
2. Permissive abortion diminishes the taboo against aggressing [against] the defenseless.
3. Abortion increases the hostility between the generations.
4. Abortion has devalued children, thus diminishing the value of caring for children.
5. Abortion increases guilt and self-hatred, which the parent takes out on the child.
6. Abortion increases hostile frustration, intensifying the battle of the sexes, for which children are scapegoated.
7. Abortion cuts the developing mother-infant bond, thereby diminishing her future mothering capability.
Overall, American statistics paint a clear picture. Legal abortion
did not reduce child abuse. In fact, the exact opposite happened. The
National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect has reported that child abuse
has increased more than 1,000 percent since the legalization of
abortion in 1973. According to data from the US Statistical Abstract,
deaths due to child abuse continued to rise after the Roe v. Wade
decision and increased by 400 percent between 1972 and 1990. Obviously,
child abuse is caused by a variety of complicated factors. Still, our
experience in the United States provides no evidence that legal abortion
reduces child abuse.
Abortion and Crime
Donohue and Levitt's study cited above presented their results from a
regression analysis that attributed an unexpected reduction in the US
crime rate during the 1990s to legalized abortion. In essence, they
argued that low-income earners and racial minorities tend to abort more
often. Since criminals disproportionately appear in these categories,
many would-be criminals were never born due to legal access to abortion.
Crimes that these would-be criminals would have committed never
happened. The study received considerable coverage from a number of
mainstream media outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post.
As a social scientist, I was skeptical of Levitt and Donohue’s
findings. They claimed that the crime rate fell earlier in the group of
states that legalized abortion before the Roe v. Wade
decision in 1973. But they did not seem to consider that many people who
obtained abortions in states that legalized early, like New York,
actually resided in other states, as reported
in a National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Theodore Joyce,
Ruoding Tan, and Yuxiu Zhang in 2012. They also claimed that states with
high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s tended to experience larger
drops in their crime rates. But again, they did not seem to control for
interstate migration. After all, many people born in one state grow up
elsewhere.
Steven Sailer has presented a devastating critique
of Levitt and Donohue’s research. He argues that the end of the
crack-cocaine wars, not legal abortion, was largely responsible for the
crime rate decline in many cities. More importantly, he shows that we
can easily test Levitt and Donohue’s hypothesis by breaking down crime
rates demographically. If their theory is correct, there should be a
sharp decrease in the crimes committed by young people.
But Sailer shows that the cohort of 14-to-17-year-olds born after the Roe v. Wade decision was much more likely to commit homicides than the cohort of 14-to-17-year-olds born before Roe v. Wade.
Similarly, the percentage and the number of violent crimes committed by
those between the ages of 12 and 17 spiked in 1993 and 1994, over
twenty years after abortion was legalized. Economists John Lott and John
Whitely have made similar arguments in an article published in the
academic journal Economic Inquiry, titled “Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out of Wedlock Births.”
Steve Sailer, "Did Legalizing Abortion Cut Crime?" December 2005.
Conclusion
Empirical evidence clearly shows that forty years of legal abortion
have not helped our society. Contrary to the bold claims of abortion
advocates, there is no proof that legal abortion has reduced either the
out-of-wedlock birthrate or the incidence of child abuse. In fact, both
the out-of-wedlock birthrate and the rate of child abuse have increased
since the onset of widespread legal abortion. And research claiming to
show that legal abortion has reduced the crime rate has been proven
flawed. Since their empirical arguments for abortion’s benefits are
weak, abortion advocates today generally focus on arguments for the
autonomy and liberty of women. However, as we observe the fortieth
anniversary of Roe v. Wade and consider the impact
of forty years of legal abortion, it is certainly worth noting that
abortion advocates’ many promises for society remain unfulfilled.
* * *
Ryan T. Anderson, “On the Fortieth Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: A Public Discourse Symposium”
Elise Italiano, “Forty Years Later: It’s Time for a New Feminism”
Michael New, “Abortion Promises Unfulfilled”
Daniel K. Williams, “The Real Reason to Criticize Roe”
Gerard V. Bradley, “The Paradox of Persons Forty Years After Roe”
Michael Stokes Paulsen, “The Right to Life Forty Years from Now”
