[thesloppy]

I dunno if/where/how it belongs in this conversation, but the book Freakonomics got it's attention & hype years ago largely based on the premise that the timing of the drop in violent crime & murder rates was based almost entirely on the legalization of abortion. The suggestion being that many less babies being born into high-risk situations resulted in that many less criminals 18-21 years later.

A controversial theory to say the least, and one that plenty of folks much smarter than me have both poked holes in and/or supported to the point that it's not necessarily going to shift anybody's thinking one way or the other, but if nothing else I think even that possibility of plausibility speaks to how shifting cultural factors in one area can result in drastic changes to another, seemingly unrelated section of our society.