NCJ Number
223302
Journal
Criminal Justice Policy Review Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Dated: June 2008 Pages: 135-152
Date Published
June 2008
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article reviews and confronts the abortion thesis of Donohue and Levitt in 2001, which contends that a latent function of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) to legalize abortion was to selectively incapacitate potential criminals before they were born.
Abstract
Donohue and Levitt’s thesis, specifically, contends that because micro level research indicates that women who are at greater risk of giving birth to crime-prone children are disproportionately more likely to elect to have abortions, the cumulative effect of these individual-level decisions, would, over time yield a reduction in the rate of serious crime. Put alternatively, they extrapolate from micro level relationships among characteristics of birth mothers from decisions, and delinquency to advance, a macro level, and compositional hypothesis concerning the delayed effects of the legalization of abortion on crime rates. The results of the interpreted analysis illustrate the limitations of such reasoning. No evidence was found that the legalization of abortion led to a decline in the birthrate for teenage, unmarried women. In summation, it is believed that crime rates are a significant social fact that rarely, if ever, can be adequately explained in terms of the simple summation of individual preferences and behaviors. Rather, they are best understood in terms of other macro-social processes and phenomena. Figures, tables, notes, references and cases cited