Social Issues

A number of complex issues exist in the debate over abortion. These, like the suggested effects upon health listed above, are a focus of research and a fixture of discussion among members on all sides the controversy.

Effect upon crime rate

A controversial theory attempts to draw a correlation between the unprecedented nationwide decline of the overall crime rate witnessed in the United States during the 1990s and the decriminalization of abortion 20 years prior.

The suggestion was brought to widespread attention by a 1999 academic paper, The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, authored by the economists Steven D. Levitt and John Donohue. They attributed the drop in crime to a reduction in individuals said to have a higher statistical probability of committing crimes: unwanted children, especially those born to mothers who are African-American, impoverished, adolescent, uneducated, and single. The change coincided with what would've been the adolescence, or peak years of potential criminality, of those who had not been born as a result of Roe v. Wade and similar cases. Donohue and Levitt's study also noted that states which legalized abortion before the rest of the nation experienced the lowering crime rate pattern earlier and that those with higher abortion rates had more pronounced reductions.

Fellow economists Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz criticized the methodology in the Donahue-Levitt study, noting a lack of accommodation for statewide yearly variations such as cocaine use, and recalculating based on incidence of crime per capita; they found no statistically significant results. Levitt and Donohue responded to this by presenting an adjusted data set which took into account these concerns but, they claim, maintained the statistical significance of their initial paper.

Such research has been criticized by some as being utilitarian, discriminatory as to race and socioeconomic class, and as promoting eugenics as a solution to crime. Levitt states in his book, Freakonomics, that they are neither promoting nor negating any course of action – merely reporting data as economists.

Sex-selective abortion

The advent of both ultrasound and amniocentesis has allowed parents to determine sex before birth. This has lead to the occurrence of sex-selective abortion or the targeted termination of a fetus based upon its gender.

It is suggested that sex-selective abortion might be partially responsible for the noticeable disparities between the birth rates of male and female children in some places. The preference for male children is reported in many areas of Asia, and the use of abortion to limit female births has been reported in Mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, and India.

In India, the economic role of men, the costs associated with dowries, and a Hindu tradition which dictates that funeral rites must be performed by a male relative have lead to a cultural preference for sons. The widespread availability of diagnostic testing, during the 1970s and '80s, lead to advertisements for services which read, "Invest 500 rupees [for a sex test] now, save 50,000 rupees [for a dowry] later." In 1991, the male-to-female sex ratio in India was skewed from its biological norm of 105 to 100, to an average of 108 to 100. Researchers have asserted that between 1985 and 2005 as many as 10 million female fetuses may have been selectively aborted. The Indian government passed an official ban of pre-natal sex screening in 1994 and moved to pass a complete ban of sex-selective abortion in 2002.

In the People's Republic of China, there is also a historic son preference. The implementation of the one-child policy in 1979, in response to population concerns, lead to an increased disparities in the sex ratio as parents attempted to circumvent the law through sex-selective abortion or the abandonment of unwanted daughters. Sex-selective abortion might be a part of what is behind the shift from the baseline male-to-female birth rate to an elevated national rate of 117:100 reported in 2002. The trend was more pronounced in rural regions: as high as 130:100 in Guangdong and 135:100 in Hainan. A ban upon the practice of sex-selective abortion was enacted in 2003.

Unsafe abortion

Where and when access to safe abortion has been barred, due to explicit sanctions or general unavailability, women seeking to terminate their pregnancies have sometimes resorted to unsafe methods.

"Back-alley abortion" is a slang term for any abortion not practiced under generally accepted standards of sanitation and professionalism. The World Health Organization defines an unsafe abortion as being, "a procedure...carried out by persons lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimal medical standards, or both." This can include a person without medical training, a professional health provider operating in sub-standard conditions, or the woman herself.

Unsafe abortion remains a public health concern today due to the higher incidence and severity of its associated complications, such as incomplete abortion, sepsis, hemorrhage, and damage to internal organs. WHO estimates that 19 million unsafe abortions occur around the world annually and that 68,000 of these result in the death of a woman. Complications of unsafe abortion are said to account, globally, for approximately 13% of all maternal mortalities, with regional estimates including 12% in Asia, 25% in Latin America, and 13% in sub-Saharan Africa. Health education, access to family planning, and improvements in healthcare during and after abortion have been proposed to address this phenomenon.