Are you pro-life or aren’t you? Whatever your take on the abortion debate is, you might want to put it aside for the rest of this entry. The impact legalized abortion has on America itself is so immense; the statistics itself could leave your mouth hanging. Of course, this should sound pretty familiar to you if you’ve picked up a copy of Steven Levitt’s and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics after it was published in 2005. The concepts explored in the book are so shocking; I guarantee it’ll change your perspective on life and the world you’re surrounded by. You might even begin to view things from an economic point of view because honestly speaking; everything has an economic “baggage” attached to it This even applies to something as controversial as abortion.

Like I said in the beginning, place your personal opinion about abortion aside and let’s just focus on crime rate. During the Cold War, crime rates soared rapidly between the 1970s and 1980s. Truth is, crimes linked to violence were so prevalent in America, New York in particular. However, there was a sharp decline in crime rates from 1985-1997. An estimated 40% decrease was observed and this shocked many intellectuals at the time.

As always, the politicians most humbly decided to announce to that they were the ones responsible for the radical decrease in crime rates in the streets of America. Bill Clinton conveniently proposed that the reason for the decrease was attributed to the policy measures implemented by the politicians’ i.e, tougher police force and a rise in the presence of police officers in the American streets.

Naturally, some of that was right. If you think about it thoroughly, it makes logical sense. Levitt on the other hand, came up with another theory. According to Levitt in Freakonomics, approximately 40% of the decrease in crime could be attributed to putting criminals behind bars. Apart from that, about 15% was the result of solving drug crime crimes and interestingly, only 10% of the decrease was due to an increase in police presence. The rest of it (approximately 30%-40%) was the result of legalized abortion.

Surprising as it is, it makes perfect sense because one way to prevent a crime from taking place is well, to have an unborn criminal. Who knew it would come to this?