Legalizing abortion has reduced crime

You may have heard Bill Bennett's recent, shocking quote about aborting black babies to reduce crime. It's a pretty disturbing quote, but the media has really taken it out of context. His comment is a supposition stemming from a theory posed by Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner in their book Freakanomics. The theory is essentially that reducing the number of unwanted children reduces the crime rate since unwanted children are at high risk of committing crimes when they reach their teens and adulthood. The book discusses the statistical correlation and how it can be shown to be a causal relationship. Levitt, one of the authors of Freakanomics, addresses Bennett's comments in a recent blog post.