Item Details

abstract

This article disaggregates Donohue and Levitt’s (DL’s) national panel-data models to the state level and shows that high concentrations of teenage abortions in a handful of states drive all of DL’s results in their 2001, 2004, and 2008 articles on crime and abortion. These findings agree with previous research showing teenage motherhood is a major maternal crime factor, whereas unwanted pregnancy is an insignificant factor. Teenage abortions accounted for more than 30% of U.S. abortions in the 1970s, but only 16% to 18% since 2001, which suggests DL’s panel-data models of crime/arrests and abortion were outdated when published. The results point to a broad range of future research involving teenage behavior. A specific means is proposed to reconcile DL with previous articles finding no relationship between crime and abortion.

subject

Crime

teenage abortion

contributor

Shoesmith, G.L. (author)

date

2020-02-13T19:42:05Z (accessioned)

2020-02-13T19:42:05Z (available)

11/18/15 (issued)

identifier

Shoesmith, G. L. (2017). Crime, teenage abortion, and unwantedness. Crime & Delinquency, 63(11), 1458-1490. (citation)

https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128715615882 (doi)

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/95976 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

SAGE

rights

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (uri)

source

Crime & Delinquency

title

Crime, teenage abortion, and unwantedness.

type

Article