Right, wrong, and permissable

[He] claimed that crime rate has gone down because of abortions. That because most people who have abortions are in a lower class, our acceptance of abortion has effectively "nipped the problem" of crime caused by poverty by killing the criminals before they were born.

The idea that there could ever be made a mathematical or economic correlation between social groups, physical/mental/emotional disorders, and crime rates, or even general undesireability is absolutely ludicrous. No repudable economist would ever wade into the social quagmire that begins when you begin to assess value, or worth to society at large, by any of these, or any other external variances.
Given that we are talking about not only an intellectual idea of worth, but the actual threat of physical annihilation or sterilization, if indeed a sound economic link can be found; delving into the very real, very basic ideas at the heart of these theories becomes of vital importance to our society.

Let us first wade into the initial idea of creating a positive link between social position, and eventual worth to society. For the sake of brevity, a very preliminary scan of the offering of the lower classes, visible minorities, and the poor, illustrates the basic worth of these classes- if these classes had been eliminated through sterilization, or extermination, so many great contributions to society would have been missed; like those made by Martin Luther King jr, to cite only one example. As well think of the great contributions made by those who suffered from disease, or disorder, who, if this economost had had his way, would have been aborted because there was a likelihood that they could be a financial burden on society; Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Steven Hawking, among so many others. Bear in mind also the vast array of artists, writers, and filmmakers who suffered from sometimes debilitating emotional or mental disorders, who's products would have been missed out on, had an economist told us that their paxil would cost the tax-payers $800 a month, for life, and had been aborted- Hemingway, Kafka, Plath, Van Gogh, Munch, and Picasso; and this to name only a very few.
This simply to prove what should be self evident, that when human beings classify other human beings as worthless, and exterminate them, we are all the less for it.

To address the second point, the supposed link between race, class, and crime level, I'll begin simply by saying this- that any economist who would make a broad socio-economic statement of this nature must be influenced by a deeper issue with minorities. While a link could be superficially made between economic want, and turning to crime to fill that void, so many more factors are involved that any economist who's degree is worth the paper it's printed on would not sully his name by getting involved in such a subject.
First, more reputable ecomomists have shown that regardless of base income levels, the same percentage of yearly salary is spent, that is, disposed of, across all income and class levels. All too often, as has also been proven, these levels of spending are too high, leaving people across all income brackets, proportionally in debt. For this reason, I would contend that it could be proven that regardless what income bracket you fall into, a sufficient cause for theft can still be made, as evidenced by the Enron, Worldcom, and high profile insider trading charges.
In fact, a strong link could almost certainly be found, showing that in many cases, the severity of thefts flow upwards; with the poor involved in petty theft, while the rich are involved in more substantial crimes.
As well, given the culture of entitlement pervasive in our upper and middle classes- found most often in our youth, contrasted with the close-knit, loyal family units found more often among poorer households, any sociological analysis would likely find that upper and middle class youth were in a higher risk category for crime than a more stable, though poorer one.
The popular conception, that semantics and philosophics aside; in the very harsh reality of our prisons, that this economists view can be justified by the simple fact that minorities make up a disproportionate percentage in our prison populations is fatally flawed. This view is unrealistic, naive, and desperately requires a deeper look.
Here in canada, whites do in fact make up a majority inside our prisons, hardly surprising in light of the fact that minorities make up such a smaller percentage of the population than south of the border. But upon further inspection, the United States prison records may in fact be skewed for different reasons.
The simple fact is that in the United States, more White peope are charged with crimes, than Black people. The fact that the latter make up a larger proportion of the prison population point towards an unjust court system, favouring the White over the Black, and the wealthy over the poor.
The popular conception that minorities commit more crimes than the white majority, is therefore deeply flawed, unless it can be proven that the police in the United States unduly arrest more innocent white citizens than they do black, a ridiculous argument based on past evidence on the subject.
For these reasons and so many more, grave doubt is cast on the basic assumptions of this economist; and, when it comes to a thing as final as abortion, sterilization, or extirmination, even a hypothetical few unjust exceptions to the rule, is unnacceptable.

Praising abortion, as this economist did, by claiming that by reducing the number of poor, often minority families, is having a significant effect on our crime rates, is simply not justifiable logically, or indeed morally. While in a society such as ours, where law determines what is permissable, rather than what is right, there can be found little legal justification for banning such acts; but justifying them with flawed logic, and a basis of class and racial stereotype is certainly wrong, and should definitely not be permissable.