Legal abortions, socioeconomic status, and measured intelligence in the United States. Biodemography and Social Biology 18(1

A pregnant woman's socioeconomic sta-tus influences the likelihood of her receiving a legal or therapeutic1 abortion in the United States, according to recent evidence. The purpose of 'this paper is to estimate the se-lection, in the sense of population genetics, against greater measured intelligence due to the recent practice of therapeutic abortions in the United States. Unless otherwise specified, all abortions dscussed will be legal or therapeutic. How this restriction to legal abortions limits the importance of the conclusions will be dis-cussed below. The argument depends on the association of frequency) of abortion with socioeconomic status and the association of socioeconomic status with measured intelligence. Heroic assumptions permit construction of an asso-ciation between frequency of abortions and meaared intelligence. If the frequencies of abortions are interpreted as changes in the fertilities of groups with different mean 1 An abortion, the premature expulsion from the uterus of the products of conception, may be das-siiied as: s ntaneous, not due to known interven-tion; iuega & induced, produced by artificial means under circumstances contrary to the hews of the state where the abortion occurs; and legally induced (also called therapeutic), produced by a r W means not contrary to atate hem. A table summark ing United S t a t a abortion hem by rtate an of 31 March 1970ia gives by Ram (1970). measured intelligence, then observations of the fertilities of groups with Merent mean measured intelligence permit an estimate of the selection against greater measured intel-ligence due to abortions