Arguments that have been made linking crime and abortion is based on this premise: A mother chooses abortion if she knows she cannot properly raise a child. That being said, those children who are not properly looked after and become initiated into a life of crime at a young age often become the perpetrators of violent crime at an older age. Therefore by not having the babies in the first place, none of the crime they would have committed would have happened. Nor is there a necessity for the mother and/or father, if he is present, to commit crime to support a child if the parent(s) is unable to do so legally.
I do agree that many of the women who get an abortion do so because they feel that they would have been unable to properly support, raise, and educate a child. However, the recent drop in violent crime could also be linked to other changes during this time. By the 90s, the baby-boomer generation had stopped reproducing. Being the population that had increased so drastically was dying out, and they had had fewer kids, those children could have been raised differently. Also, “the Pill” was not released until the 1960s, but that does not mean that is when it became widely accessible. At that time it was used by approximately a million women; today it is used by almost twelve million – that makes a big difference.
I think it is always challenging to determine if a phenomenon is caused by something because correlation does not always imply causation. Determining if abortion lowered crime rates is not something that can be tested in a lab. It is something where all we have is numbers and we have to say “caused” or “correlates.” I think the argument that those children that would not have been looked after properly were aborted therefore CAUSED a decrease in crime is a very legitimate argument, and they do have the numbers to support their point. My only concern is was it abortion alone, or also the increased availability of oral contraceptives, better sex-ed classes, or the lesser stigma attached to condoms? I think it might be all of these things that led to a decrease in the children that would not have been provided for.
According to this argument, if we make abortion illegal, then crime rates will sky rocket again. If this argument could be proven beyond reasonable doubt, it would be a real setback to pro Life organizations. I also feel that if we’re claiming those who commit crime may have been undesirable and it’s not there fault, we open up the door to an affirmative defense: My parents shouldn’t have chosen to have me. It’s their fault I committed those crimes, not mine.