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Abortion Did Not Lower Crime Rate

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Ever since Freakonomics was published, and sold, which it sold very well to be honest, there has been many debates about one theory that Steven D. Levitt used to explain why the crime rate dropped in the 1990’s. That theory is that the Supreme Court case of Roe V Wade, which legalized abortion in all fifty states. Steven Levitt stated in Freakonomics that the legalization of abortion had the biggest percentage of why the crime rate went down. Yet, I would like to question this theory myself. One big controversy that I have with this theory is that Mr. Levitt did not put in to factor the crack issues that were occurring during the time. The 1990’s was the biggest boom for the crack industry, becoming the major reason of why people were committing homicide during the decade. So how does one truly know if those fetuses that were aborted would have joined the crack fiasco (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113314261192407815-HLjarwtM95Erz45QPP0pDWul8rc_20061127.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top). Another issue that I have with this abortion theory is that it is being conducted as a total, complete whole of all people in the United States. In the 1970’s non-white females were at their peak of abortions. One would expect that the crime rate should be the lowest then in the 1990’s for non-whites, but in the years of 1993 and 1994 homicide was at its peak for young black male adults. Even though the statistics prove this to be true, Levitt and his partner of this theory, John

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