What came as a surprise was that the legalization of abortion in the US with the decision of the Supreme Court in 1973 played a considerable role in the drop in crime rates in the US during the 1990s.

Lately Turkey has been embroiled in a debate on abortion. The debate started ten days ago, and since then abortion has been on top of the agenda throughout the country. Yet, the debate is still trivial. Have you received any hint about what would be the concrete effects of a possible ban on abortion? Personally, I have not. You might be uncomfortable that abortion is used as a birth control method. Or, you might think that women’s right to make decisions about their own bodies is of higher importance. In any case, don’t you think it would be useful if we knew the planned or unplanned measurable consequences of a ban on or legalization of abortion? I think it would. Economic literature offers impact analyses on the effects of any type of public intervention. There also are impact analyses on bans on or the liberalization of abortion as tools of public intervention. According to these, the liberalization of abortion contributes to the lowering of crime rates. Let me tell you how.

Impact analyses have been conducted on the USA, and Central Europe and Scandinavian countries. The recent debate in Turkey, however, is based on emotional assessments, not on impact analysis. The first law banning abortion in the USA was passed in 1828 in New York. By the early twentieth century, abortion was banned throughout the States. The debates on abortion flamed again in the 1960s. During the 1970s, the ban on abortion was lifted in five states: New York, California, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii. Later, in 1973, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion throughout the country. According to the majority view in the Supreme Court, abortion is a personal issue to be decided by the mother-to-be. Of course, everyone does not have to agree. For example, when he assumed the power in Romania in 1966, Nicolae Ceausescu immediately banned abortion, declaring that the fetus was the property of the entire society and thus the mother-to-be did not have any say. If he were alive today, he would love the Turkish Health Minister’s statement:  “If necessary, we will take children from their families and raise them ourselves as the state.” Ceausescu was of the view that a large child population would make the new socialist generation.

Anyway, let’s go back to the US case. The positive outcomes of the legalization of abortion in 1973 were seen in the 1990s. Crime rates in the US decreased to 40 percent. The drop in crime rates reached as high as 78 percent in some states including New York. Everyone started to search for the causes of the drop: the size of the police force had increased, which was an important factor on this account. The increase in the number of penitentiaries explained the fall in crime rates to some degree. Among other explanatory variables were the decrease in unemployment and economic growth. What came as a surprise was that the legalization of abortion with the decision of the Supreme Court in 1973 had played a considerable role in the drop in crime rates during the 1990s. Moreover, the drops were more rapid in states that had legalized abortion earlier.

The statistics and the impact analyses tell us that we unfortunately have to expect that the life prospects and achievements of an unwanted child will be lower than those of a wanted child. This is why it became almost impossible to find children waiting for adoption across the US. Also, the number of children raised by the state in orphanages decreased considerably. Instead, 1.5 million abortions were performed annually. I think those who know how much effort raising a child requires will understand what I am trying to say. When making an assessment, it is necessary to distinguish between what must be done and what happens in reality. It is only God, not the state, who makes everything happen. This is the last point to state.

The state’s decision on a possible ban on abortion is a particular concern for the entire society. The issue interests the voters of two decades later, who do not have a say in this yet. That there has been no impact analysis on a possible ban on abortion in Turkey is shameful for all of us. What we need is analyses, not empty talk.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 05.06.2012