In the 1980s and ’90s, police, legislators, and even President Clinton were predicting that crime rates would continue to climb astronomically. For example, in New York City in 1990 there were a total of more than 2,000 homicides for the year. What to do to curb this alarming amount of violence? Stricter death penalty laws, longer prison sentences, increased police numbers, better education systems, the potential for improved economic advancement? All of these had been tried with little, or no, significant effect.
Yet, in 2005, the crime rate dropped significantly. New York City, for example, plummeted from its level of more than 2000 homicides just five years earlier to a low of slightly more than 500. What did economists attribute this to? Not gun control, or prison rehabilitation programs, or the other catch phrases of the times. But to the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision on Roe vs. Wade. That was the controversial decision that made abortions legal all across the U.S. While this was in the gross sense the underlying reason for the reduction in crime, more importantly it pointed out the real cause. It was that drug addicts, prostitutes and teenage mothers do not provide the happy, loving, nurturing environment of a two-parent home that children need to develop normally. The recent school massacres for the most part bear witness to that. Do you really think those needy little monsters were hatched in some alien universe? No, in almost every case from Charles Manson onward it has been the early childhood environment that is to blame.