Is Your Local Abortionist the New Crime Fighting Superhero?

Thanks to Steven Levitt's Freakonomics we all know that legalizing abortion was responsible for the dramatic drop in crime in American cities, right? Not quite. In a series of pieces on his website, the incredibly prolific Steve Sailer has leveled a devastating critique of Levitt's theory.

The basic gist of Sailer's debunking is that Levitt's theory fails in two ways. First, the first generation of teenagers from whom the worst would-be offenders were supposedly purged by abortion went on one of the bloodiest murder sprees in American history. Second, Levitt's assumption that abortion reduces unwanted births ignores the fact that legalizing abortion actually increased unwanted pregnancies. Taken together this amounts to a knock-out blow against Freakonomics most famous chapter.