"Donohue and Levitt (2003) argue that tests of abortion and total crime are weak between 1985 and 1990 because a relatively small proportion of all criminals were exposed to legalized abortion before 1990. As evidence, they point to their relatively low effective abortion ratio over this period. However, the low figure results from their inappropriate assumption that there were no abortions prior to 1973 in the 45 nonrepeal states. Early surveillance by the CDC found that there were 175,508 reported abortions in 1970, 480,259 in 1971, and 586,760 in 1972 in the United States (Centers for Disease Control 1971, 1972, 1973). Moreover, the resident abortion ratio in the repeal states: Alaska, California, Washington D.C., Hawaii, New York, and Washington, was 340 in 1971 and 370 in 1972 (Author’s calculations based on data from CDC (1972, Table 4) and CDC (1974, Table 5). According to CDC data, the abortion ratio for the entire US peaked in 1981 at 358 (Koonin et al. 1997). In other words, cohorts born in repeal states between 1971 and 1973 were exposed to a level of abortion that exceeded the maximum average exposure for the entire country at any time since abortion became legal."