Do Abortions Bring Down Crime Rates?

By Adam David Houk

Edited by: John R. Houk

© March 15, 2011

You know how pro-choice people are always saying that abortions are good for crime rates.  Well I looked up some things and made a chart that would throw that idea out of the water.  I have made a chart of crimes per Population as a percentage and the number of abortions per Population as a percentage.  I also included and offset of 10 years to allow for children to come to an age of crime-worthiness.  The results are profound. Look at the chart.

Year	Population	# Crimes	Percentage per Population	Abortions	Percentage per Population	PPP offset by 10 years
1960	179,323,175	3,384,200	1.89
1961	182,992,000	3,488,000	1.91
1962	185,771,000	3,752,200	2.02
1963	188,483,000	4,109,500	2.18
1964	191,141,000	4,564,600	2.39
1965	193,526,000	4,739,400	2.45
1966	195,576,000	5,223,500	2.67
1967	197,457,000	5,903,400	2.99
1968	199,399,000	6,720,200	3.37
1969	201,385,000	7,410,900	3.68
1970	203,235,298	8,098,000	3.98
1971	206,212,000	8,588,200	4.16
1972	208,230,000	8,248,800	3.96
1973	209,851,000	8,718,100	4.15	744,600	0.35
1974	211,392,000	10,253,400	4.85	898,600	0.43
1975	213,124,000	11,292,400	5.30	1,034,200	0.49
1976	214,659,000	11,349,700	5.29	1,179,300	0.55
1977	216,332,000	10,984,500	5.08	1,316,700	0.61
1978	218,059,000	11,209,000	5.14	1,409,600	0.65
1979	220,099,000	12,249,500	5.57	1,497,700	0.68
1980	225,349,264	13,408,300	5.95	1,553,900	0.69
1981	229,146,000	13,423,800	5.86	1,577,300	0.69
1982	231,534,000	12,974,400	5.60	1,573,900	0.68
1983	233,981,000	12,108,600	5.18	1,575,000	0.67	0.35
1984	236,158,000	11,881,800	5.03	1,577,200	0.67	0.43
1985	238,740,000	12,431,400	5.21	1,588,200	0.67	0.49
1986	240,132,887	13,211,869	5.50	1,574,000	0.66	0.55
1987	242,282,918	13,508,700	5.58	1,559,100	0.64	0.61
1988	245,807,000	13,923,100	5.66	1,590,800	0.65	0.65
1989	248,239,000	14,251,400	5.74	1,566,900	0.63	0.68
1990	248,709,873	14,475,600	5.82	1,608,600	0.65	0.69
1991	252,177,000	14,872,900	5.90	1,556,500	0.62	0.69
1992	255,082,000	14,438,200	5.66	1,528,900	0.60	0.68
1993	257,908,000	14,144,800	5.48	1,495,000	0.58	0.67
1994	260,341,000	13,989,500	5.37	1,423,000	0.55	0.67
1995	262,755,000	13,862,700	5.28	1,359,400	0.52	0.67
1996	265,228,572	13,493,863	5.09	1,360,160	0.51	0.66
1997	267,637,000	13,194,571	4.93	1,335,000	0.50	0.64
1998	270,296,000	12,475,634	4.62	1,319,000	0.49	0.65
1999	272,690,813	11,634,378	4.27	1,314,800	0.48	0.63
2000	281,421,906	11,608,072	4.12	1,312,990	0.47	0.65
2001	285,317,559	11,876,669	4.16	1,291,000	0.45	0.62
2002	287,973,924	11,878,954	4.13	1,269,000	0.44	0.60
2003	290,690,788	11,826,538	4.07	1,250,000	0.43	0.58
2004	293,656,842	11,679,474	3.98	1,222,100	0.42	0.55
2005	296,507,061	11,565,499	3.90	1,206,200	0.41	0.52
2006	299,398,484	11,401,511	3.81			0.51
2007	301,621,157	11,251,828	3.73			0.50
2008	304,374,846	11,160,543	3.67			0.49
2009	307,006,550	10,639,369	3.47			0.48
						0.47
						0.45
						0.44
						0.43
						0.42
						0.41

I took the population of the year and divided it by the parameter and multiplied it by 100.  This gave me a percentage of acts done per person per year (whether it is crime or abortions).

My first point to make is that there is no way anyone could use abortions as a means to lower crime as an excuse to legalize it.  This just is not true.  I made an offset of the abortions rate of 10 years because I believe that children are at an age where they are smart enough to get themselves into a lot of trouble, and is also an age in which parents may start to let children roam around more freely.  Looking at this 10 year offset I noticed that both abortions and crime rates steadily increase from (5.18, .35) percent to (5.90, .69) percent.  Where on this offset both start to decrease never again increase for more than 1 consecutive year.

This therefore makes more of a connection to abortions increasing the rate of crime than decreasing it.  This should be mind boggling.

The only possible reason that I can think of for the opposite connection of the suggested crime rates and abortions is that the suspected people having abortions aren't the ones having them.  This is those that don't really want the children.  While it is true that those that have abortions are mostly among the poorer communities we must remember that abortion clinics target those areas purposefully.

I would like to make a new suggestion.  Those having abortions are people that have an actual interest in their future, not really the ones that don't really care about their children, and it is these people that if they had children that have a tendency to change their attitude of self interest in their future to interest in the children's future and those things that affect their children's future while those that really only care about now, probably don't care enough about the future to even bother changing when they have children and have the children anyway.  Therefore those that might have influenced drops in crime rates are not longer being produced while those who add to crime rates aren't changing their contribution.  As usual no one can make a blanket characterization for all and there will always be exceptions to the rule, but I would like to suggest that this is the majority of abortions.  While it is important to remember this is speculation, I think it is a good one.  I challenge others to come up with a different reason why abortion statistics might be connected with the increase rather than decrease of crime rates.

I will always take the stand that Life starts at conception, and I think it has been a callous disregard for life that we sided with the selfishness of convenience. Giving rights for the choice to destroy life while giving scientists the time to prove scientifically whether it is a life or not rather than side on the caution that it might be a life is very tragic.   For when we find out later that it is a life we will have already murdered tens of millions of unborn babies if not hundreds of millions.  That is genocide.