Before Roe v. Wade

A study known as The 1972 Rockefeller Commission on Population and the American Future is one of the most well known claims of the correlation between legalized abortion and crime rates. Research done by the Commission indicated that the children of women that were denied an abortion statistically turned out to be “registered more often with psychiatric services, engaged in more antisocial and criminal behavior, and have been more dependent on public assistance,” as opposed to children whose mother’s did not want to terminate their pregnancy (“Population and the American Future.”). The Rockefeller Commission cited a study done by Inga Thuwe and Hans Forssman in 1966; this study was one of the first studies to have serious empirical research on the topic. During their research Thuwe and Forssman studied one hundred and eighty eight children of women who had been denied abortions in a hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden between the years of 1939 and 1941. During this study these unwanted children were compared to the next child born after them. There was a higher probability for the children that were unwanted to grow up in poor living environments such has having divorced parents. Consequently, these unwanted children were more likely to become juvenile delinquents and more likely to become involved in criminal activity (“Population and the American Future.”). The basis of this study was cited in the majority opinion written by Justice Blackmun in the Roe v. Wade case. Justice Blackmun referenced the problems “of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it” (ROE v. WADE).

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