>Of course, this all eventually leads to the question of what is the "crime rate?" Is it the overall number of crimes committed or is it the percentage of people in the populace committing crimes? I think you'd get widely varying opinions on whether or not the percentage stat can really be changed.

It's, AFAIK, number of crimes per capita. What's funny, though, is that white collar crimes don't count. Just try any of the realtors' websites and check the crime rate statistics. You get the number of murders, number of thefts, arsons, etc... all the violent things. You don't ever get a single bit of a number about embezzlements, frauds, cons, creative accounting, fake bankruptcies.

BTW, widespread abortion may only indirectly lower the crime rate, by lowering the density of population (hence less chance of road rage, annoying neighbors etc), but that would again be number of crimes per capita - with less heads, you'd only get both numbers lowered. So it may head in either direction.