Is there a link between abortion and crime ?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Obviously there is a link, the more abortions there are the less single parents there will be and we all know it is the children from single parent families that cause all the crime.

Yet demographics tell us that, in most Western countries, the number of unwed mothers has increased -- both as a raw number and as a percentage -- during the time frames when abortion has been legal and more or less generally available. This says to me that some other change is driving both and that one cannot "cure" the other.

I agree that single parent househoulds and crime frequency correlate, but nobody has demonstrated a causal link statistically yet (at least I haven't seen it). Not saying it isn't there, but as noted above, demonstrating a causal link is much more difficult then suggesting the nature of that link.

Don't assume causality when both phenomena may be symptoms of some larger cause. Remember, in virtually all instances, an increase in the number of churches in a given community is very highly correlated with an increase in the number of prostitutes.