Title: Are Abortion and Crime Rates Related? [UPDATED]
Headings: Does Abortion Reduce Crime?
Does Abortion Reduce Crime?
Donohue and Levitt’s 2001 Study
Counterevidence from Lott and Whitley
Donohue and Levitt’s 2019 Study
A Moral Argument
Negative Effects of Abortion on Society
Final Thoughts
Endnotes

Content: Instead, the number of crimes committed by older people dropped first. Nearly 60% of the decline in murder since 1990 involved killers aged 25 and older—who were born before Roe v. Wade.5
Other nations with high abortion rates had a large increase in crime about 18 years after legalizing abortion, as Murray found. For example, in Great Britain, which legalized abortion in 1968, violent crime
rose steeply from about 1985 to 2000―exactly when it should have been declining, according to the Donohue‑Levitt thesis. However, in the past 20 years, the incidents of violent crime have begun declining. Additionally, Russia, which has the highest abortion rate on earth—then and now—experienced a tidal wave of every kind of violent crime following the breakup of the Soviet Union. This is a trend that has, since 2000, begun to decline. Teen murder rates were higher for teens born after the legalization of abortion . Statistics show that the murder rate in 1993 for 14- to 17-year-olds in the US (born in the years 1975‑1979, which had very high abortion rates) was 3.6 times higher than that of kids who were the same age in 1984 (who were born in the pre‑legalization years of 1966‑1970). According to a Child Trends report, as of 2017, homicides declined in the 1990s, but then began to fluctuate over the next 20 years, though never getting as high as the 80’s rate. As of 2017, it was 8.7 per 100,000.