I watched Freakonomics last night

I still need to read the book, but one thing I found incredibly interesting and timely was the “Donohue-Levitt hypothesis (pdf)”.

This hypothesis states that the SCOTUS decision in 1973 on Roe V Wade legalizing abortion is a big part of why crime rates began falling around 20 years later. Now they go to great lengths to explain that abortion is not a crime fighting technique, but rather that when women can legally control when they have children this leads to better home environments for the children they do have, which leads to these children growing up less likely to commit crime. The data they found during their study was obviously strong enough for them to make this assertion and propose this theory, and after reading up on it myself I am inclined to agree.