Link between abortion and crime
Safire's replacement, John Tierney, has a fascinating column this morning discussing the Manhattan debate between Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Tipping Point) and University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt:

It is an inspirational urban lesson from the 1990's: take back the streets from squeegee men and drug dealers, and violent crime will plummet. But on Thursday evening, the tipping-point theory was looking pretty wobbly itself.

[snip]

Professor Levitt considers the New York crime story to be an urban legend. Yes, he acknowledges, there are tipping points when people suddenly start acting differently, but why did crime drop in so many other cities that weren't using New York's policing techniques? . . . [T]he single most important cause, he says, was an event two decades earlier: the legalization of abortion in New York State in 1970, three years before it was legalized nationally by the Supreme Court.

The result, he maintains, was a huge reduction in the number of children who would have been at greater than average risk of becoming criminals during the 1990's. Growing up as an unwanted child is itself a risk factor, he says, and the women who had abortions were disproportionately likely to be unmarried teenagers with low incomes and poor education - factors that also increase the risk.

[snip]

[Levitt] says the correlations are clear: crime declined earlier in the states that had legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, and it declined more in places with high abortion rates, like New York. Some criminologists have quarreled with his statistics, but the theory was looking robust at the end of the debate in Manhattan. Mr. Gladwell, while raising what he called a few minor quibbles, seemed mostly persuaded by the numbers.

[snip]

Unlike the abortion theory, which was raised in the 1990's and angrily dismissed, the tipping-point idea jibed reassuringly with everyone's beliefs and needs. Urbanites and politicians welcomed a new reason to crack down on street nuisances. Journalists wanted a saga with heroes. Criminologists and the police loved to see their new strategies having dramatic results.

[snip]

But it now looks as if the good guys did not take back the streets all on their own, and the moral of the story is less about safe streets than safe beliefs. Professor Levitt's abortion theory is not appealing. But the ideas that make us comfortable are the ones to beware.

The idea that unwanted children are at a greater risk of growing up to be angry, violent criminals is not earth-shattering (and certainly not new to me). But I am a little stunned that Mr. Tierney chose to introduce this controversial theory in one of his first columns. The fundies are not going to like that. Any idea that challenges their carefully crafted spin about why women choose to have abortions or demonstrates positive results of legalizing abortion is likely to infuriate the theocrats. It'll be interesting to read the letters to the editor over the next few days.

Update: Wingnut responses are already out there. Steve Sailer calls it "Pre-Natal Capital Punishment."
- posted by TJ @ 10:21 AM