Does Abortion Prevent Crime?

John Donohue and Steven Levitt wrote a paper about legalization of abortionin 1970s to reduce crime in the 1990s. The purpose of the study is to better understand the reasons for the sharp decline in crime during this decade, which, prior to their research, had largely eluded explanation.
The theoretical justification for their argument rests on two assumtions: 1)Legalized abortion leads to fewer "unwanted" babies being born, and 2) unwanted babies are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect and are therefore at an increased risk for criminal involvement later in life. At that point, the question merely becomes: Is the magnitude of the impact large or small?

Their preliminary research suggests that the effect of abortion legalization is large. According to their estimates, as much as one-half of the remarkable decline in crime in the 1990s may be attributable to the legalization of abortion. They based their conclusions on four separate data analyses.
First, they demonstrate that crime rates began to fall 18 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across the nation, just the point at which babies born under legalized abortion would be reaching the peak adolescent crime years. Steven levitt thinks this is the weakest of their data analyses. He says the world is a complicated place and it would be simplistic to believe that legalized abortion could overpower all other social determinants of crime. Second, they show that the five states that legalized abortion in 1970--three years before Roe vs. Wade--saw crime begin to decrease roughly three years earlier than the rest of the nation. But to him this is still far from conclusive. Third, they demonstrate that states with high abortion rates in the mid-1970s have had much greater crime decreases in the 1990s than states that had low abortion rates in the 1970s. And this is the evidence that really starts to convince him. Fourth, they show that the abortion-related drop in crime is occurring only for those who today are under the age of 25. According to Steven Levitt they can make no judgment as to whether legalized abortion is good or bad. In no way does their paper endorse abortion as a form of birth control. In no way does their paper suggest that the government should restrict any woman's right to bear children. Their paper actually has very little to say on such topics. He thinks the crux of the misinterpretation of their study is that critics of their work fail to see the distinction between identifying a relationship between social phenomena and endorsing such a relationship. To him it has been both fascinating and disturbing how the media have insisted on reporting this as a study about race, when race really is not an integral part of the story.

I definitely agree with Stven Levitt, because as he said in this world we can not make any judgement whether legalized abortion is good or bad. I do believe that abortion is bad because God made as and he is the only who can make any judgement about our lifes. But abortion should be legalized not because it decreases crimes but because in some cases it should be. Also in some points Steven Levitt could give more of his opinion about why he thinks abortion should be or shouldn' t be legalized so the readers could be able to give him better feedback.