What brings this to mind is press attention to a recent study by the University of Chicago’s Steve Levitt and Stanford University’s John Donohue, purporting to find that the declining crime rate can be credited to legalized abortion. The upshot, we’re told: All those potential young hoodlums never made it out of the womb.

There’s reason to doubt the accuracy of the study on factual grounds; a closer look at the numbers suggests it gave too little weight to other factors, like the rise and fall of a crack-cocaine related crime wave. (Those interested in checking out the debate can find an illuminating exchange between Levitt and one of his critics, Steve Sailer, in the online magazine Slate.)

I suppose such arguments have their place, but I must admit, I have a hard time getting into them. I’m too busy recoiling from the idea that if abortion did reduce crime, it would somehow justify the (let’s not mince words here) violent destruction of unborn babies who haven’t committed any crimes. Levitt and Donohue say they didn’t intend to send that message, and maybe they didn’t. Yet it’s just what lots of people, like the aforementioned country clubbers, will hear — and want to hear.

The abortion movement is full of dirty little secrets like this. Though it paints itself as impeccably progressive, the "pro-choice" crowd contains a sizable element who just want to be rid of the "wrong" sort of people, and they’re not picky about whether the method is birth control or abortion. Sometimes they’ll even say explicitly that "wrong" means something more specific than lazy or criminal. Another memory: After my church put up a pro-life display a few years ago, one angry critic wrote to ask, "What would you do if your daughter was raped by a black man?"

That critic wrote anonymously, but once upon a time public candor was more common. Consider Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who was heavily into racial and eugenic theories.

Sanger frequently spoke of the need to reduce populations of blacks and others she called "human weeds," "human waste" and "a class of people who never should have been born at all." It was imperative, she wrote in her 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization, "to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world." Sanger embraced some interesting allies in her quest. In 1933, while editing the Birth Control Review, she published an article by Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s director of genetic sterilization and a founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene, entitled "Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need."

Planned Parenthood naturally isn’t eager to mention this aspect of their history these days. But tellingly, they continue to celebrate Sanger, naming a library after her just a few months ago.

The point here isn’t to claim that all or even most "pro-choicers" think this way. But it’s revealing that liberals, normally quick to accuse opponents of "racism" on the slightest grounds, are mysteriously devoid of outrage over the genuine article within the ranks of the abortion movement. I suspect the reason isn’t just embarrassment. It’s also the fact that such attitudes persist today among many of their wealthiest backers — the sort of folk who can afford country clubs.

This bespeaks a high level of cynicism in the abortion movement that we’re not supposed to notice. Nor are we supposed to notice certain other obvious and unsavory motives. We’re supposed to ignore how profitable it is for abortionists (who like to be called "abortion providers," as if they were performing a charitable service) or how convenient it is to men. (As columnist Joe Sobran notes, you’ll never hear a "pro-choice" man say he supports legalized abortion so he can have sex without responsibility — even though millions of them must think exactly that.)

I don’t want to make too much of these points. In and of itself, establishing self-serving, even ugly, motives for abortion doesn’t prove it’s wrong, any more than establishing good motives for opposing abortion does. But it’s far from irrelevant either. At the very least it ought to instill a presumptive suspicion about a movement that claims to be interested solely in the high-sounding ideal of "choice."

By contrast, the pro-life movement should enjoy a presumptive respect. Some individuals may adopt bad attitudes, but this is a far cry from the built-in pandering to selfish or otherwise bad motives which sustains the abortion industry. Indeed, it’s pro-lifers who run thousands of crisis pregnancy centers with volunteers and low-paid staffers, helping girls and women throughout their pregnancies and for months and even years afterward. That’s a selfless undertaking, and it’s one pro-choicers have bypassed (yet another reason to suspect they’re being disingenuous when they say they support any choice a woman makes).

All this matters because many people are swayed to the pro-choice side less by its arguments than by the media-fostered perception that it’s the nice side. For a quarter century Americans have been told that pro-choicers are "caring" people and pro-lifers — grim warriors, driven by their dehumanizing religious dogma — aren’t. But take a closer look. You’re apt to find that many of the "nice" folk aren’t as nice as you’ve heard, and many of the "nasty" folk are a lot nicer.