Steven Levitt took the impolitic racial element out of his overt argument between his 1999 paper and his 2005 book. By leaving it out–although the argument does, in reality, involve (among other things) the abortion of black babies who would otherwise grow up to be criminals–he was able to get, so far, three rave reviews in the New York Times.
Bennett is now saying that he was merely drawing on Freakonomics. But Bennett’s argument was actually stronger than the argument in Freakonomics. Bennett’s claim about what would happen to crime rates if, somehow, all black babies were aborted, is nearly incontrovertibly true because it is sadly true that blacks are disproportionately involved in crime. There are, on the other hand, excellent reasons to doubt Levitt’s claim that liberal abortion laws have reduced crime.