Posted on 01/25/2005 8:44:17 AM PST by qam1
Several years ago I had an elderly neighbor who would always tout the benefits of legalized abortion. To him, it was simply a matter of cost efficiency. He would quote me the cost to the state and federal governments of raising a child to adulthood and beyond on public assistance and incarceration of a certain percentage of these folks. The figures were truly mind-boggling, for we were talking of tens of millions of aborted unborn babies. My neighbor was correct about the initial costs. It will always be cheaper to kill the unborn than to have a baby.
While it may seem crass to argue the pro-life perspective from the economic impact on our society, it does bear looking at. We have discussed this subject every which way, and at this point, only the very ignorant would contend that the unborn are not people. Those who deny the personhood of the unborn do so out of loyalty to the cause of "reproductive choice" or inability or unwillingness to admit their part in killing innocent lives.
My neighbor's hypothesis assumed all of these children would be born to single women or at least families on public assistance. He assumed they would all grow up to be on welfare for the rest of their lives at best and incarcerated at worst. There are a few things wrong with that assumption.
Statistically, at least some of those aborted and missing from our tax roles today would be on the dole or even possibly locked up. But certainly most of these would be productive members of society. The oldest would be in their early 30s; getting married; having more children; buying houses; some moving up the corporate ladder; some with low-paying, hard-to-fill jobs; some nursing their elderly parents; and paying Social Security. Our colleges, high schools and grade schools would be bulging at the seams. We would need bigger buildings, more teachers and more everything. But that would be OK because we would have more tax dollars to pay for these expenses. We would certainly have more soldiers and more doctors and more nurses and more workers in just about every category. In fact, there might not be a need for illegal immigrants if we had not callously extinguished an entire generation.
But what of the women who would have birthed these babies? Wouldn't the financial impact of choosing life have been negative for them? Choosing life doesn't mean they would be forced to parent the child. The waiting list to adopt American infants is many months and sometimes years long. A tremendous number of couples choose to adopt foreign infants to fill the supply/demand gap. Even for infants with special needs, there's no lack of empty arms waiting eagerly to assume the role that the birth mother may not be able to fulfill. Perhaps if some of the energy and dollars currently being routed to protect "a woman's right to choose" were instead funneled into programs to support and encourage her right to be a mother, many of those women would choose to parent their children.
Post-abortion women have an elevated risk of substance abuse and a higher incidence of smoking than women with other reproductive outcomes. Women are six times more likely to commit suicide following an abortion than following childbirth. There is substantial evidence that induced abortion is an independent risk factor for breast cancer in women. Tens of millions of healthier, happier women surely would be good for our economy.
Just imagine the effect of 50 million more babies using disposable diapers, consuming formula and baby food, getting medical care, clothing and other assorted "baby" things.
Now, imagine 50 million more wage earners paying Social Security and fueling our economy. There, now doesn't that make you feel bullish on America?
Debbie Joslin is president of Eagle Forum Alaska and is a former national committeewoman for Alaska to the Republican National Committee. She lives in Delta Junction.
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Most of whom would have voted for Gore or Kerry....
BTTT - to read later.
Wow - it's a good thing we dodged that bullet. Let's kill 40 million more.
Not necessarily. My mom is a Democrat, and I turned out okay. :) LOL
I think the person who was ordained to cure some of our illnesses of today, cancer, diabetes, etc... may have been aborted and therefore, it is possible no cure will be found.
Hey, I actually voted for McGovern on my 1st trip to the polls.
My kids today would not even consider a vote for Gore or Kerry. I think that the younger generation is a lot wiser than we were/I was.
Indeed! This calls out for reductio ad absurdum. If we aborted 100% of all preganancies, our costs would drop dramatically and we'd all be much better off!
Strictly speaking, I don't think we can look at the total number of children lost as a total change to the American population, because many women who had abortions when they were young went on to have children later in life that they might not have had (using the pill) if they'd started a family sooner.
Might have been another Einstein in there...or someone that would have found the cure for cancer...or any number of things. But the numbers are elevated. Some of the women that aborted once have multiple abortions. If they had the first child, the probablility of getting pregnant again decline. You tend to get "more responsible" etc. My wife and I used to joke that our son was the best birth control in the world. Not only for ourselves, but for the neighbors in our apartment complex we used to live in. He would start crying (colic) at about 0200 when all the single folk were getting back from the bars or whatever.
Aw, now, you know that's not what I meant.... The point was, simply, that if the author is going to be predicting outcomes of unrealized lives, then we can't just focus on the good things they might have done. It's likely that, because of family background, more of them would have voted "D" than "R."
Just imagine if all the babies, throughout history that were aborted, had lived...or for that matter, all the people that died in any way other than from natural causes, or accidents??!!
We are thinking alike -- my three kids are Republicans and conservative but a lot of Dems chose the abortion route so the liberal group is going to get smaller and smaller thanks to themselves!
At a neighborhood party a couple of months ago, an elderly lib was lamenting about how she wasn't sure if she would be able to retire because social security was in such a financial mess. My response was that if bigger families were promoted, all the babies born would be able to support the System in 20 years. She said she hadn't thought of that. When I said I believe part of the social security mess is because of the prevalence of abortion as a form of birth control, she was so shocked she couldn't speak.
What really disgusts me is when people, especially "conservatives," lament abortion because "those babies could've paid for our social security".
What a truly sick attitude to take. We shouldn't oppose abortion for such socialist and selfish reasons. We should oppose abortion because it's wrong. Period.
I wonder what his "cost efficiency" calculations showed for the elderly.
I gotcha. The sad thing is you're right about who they'd vote for...
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