Reply #5: Legalized abortion is GOOD for society (going on a tangent) [View All]

[CAcyclist]

edited- wrong study posted initially - all the items on this study are pdfs so I posted this instead

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2232

Lastly, Levitt argues that the legalisation of abortion in the early '70s helped reduce crime two decades later. This controversial theory rests on two premises - that unwanted children are more likely to grow up and commit crime, and that abortion reduced the number of unwanted births. Using variation in abortion rates across US states, Levitt concludes that nearly one-quarter of the total decline in crime during the past decade can be attributed to the legalisation of abortion. My own research (with Stanford University's Justin Wolfers) suggests that the same may be true for Australia.

So according to Levitt, America's crime success comes down to more police, more prisons, less crack and legalised abortion. On prisons and abortion, there is little for Australian policymakers to learn. Abortion is de-facto legal throughout the nation, and we are probably at the point where the social gain from increasing the jail population would be outweighed by the scarring effect of incarceration.