Abstract No one is sure why crime rates have plummeted in the United States over the past decade. But that fact hasn't stopped politicians from taking credit for the recession. The latest theory for why crime is falling, advanced in a report by two highly regarded economists, is sparking outrage and intense debate. Economists argue that abortion could prevent the birth of unwanted children, who would receive very little attention from their parents and therefore be more likely to commit crime. In the report, Dr. John J. Donohue 3d of Stanford Law School and Dr. Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago argue that much of the decline in crime in the 1990s - perhaps as much as half - can be attributed to the sharp increase of abortions after the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Fewer crimes are committed today, researchers say, because many of the children who might have grown up to commit those crimes were never born. Within a few years of the Roe v. Wade, who established the constitutional right to abortion, up to a quarter of pregnancies ended in abortion, statistics show. Dr. Donohue and Dr. Levitt base their thesis on economic analysis of crime rates from 1985 to 1997, examined as a function of abortion rates two decades earlier. The timing of the crime decline, they found, coincided with the period in which children born shortly after the Roe v. Wade would have reached his late teens, the peak age for criminal activity. The states that were the first to legalize abortion, Dr. Donohue and Dr. Levitt found, including New York, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, were also the first to experience a decrease in crime. For example, in states that legalized abortion in 1969 or 1970, researchers found that the cumulative decrease in crime from 1982 to 1997 was greater than in the rest of the nation. The decrease in homicides was 16.2% greater, the overall decrease in violent crimes was 34.4% greater, and the decrease in property crimes was 35.3% greater. Additionally, states with higher abortion rates, the researchers found, had larger reductions in crime. compared to states with low abortion rates. The most likely explanation for these findings, the researchers say, is that the abortion occurred selectively, decreasing the number of children who might commit crimes as adults...