Posted on 10/13/2008 3:47:06 PM PDT by wagglebee
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A researcher who has spent over a decade examining the economic impact of abortion finds that the approximately 50.5 million abortions in the U.S. since 1970 have cost the American economy $35 trillion. That comes in the form of lost productivity by having fewer workers contributing to society.
Those contributions also come in the form of taxpayers contributing to state, federal and local governments that would have had more funds to pay teachers, offer health care benefits or put more police on the streets.
The cost to the economy also includes the lost support for the social security system, which experts say still presents a host of challenges for the future and questions about whether younger Americans will receive anything from it.
Dennis Howard, the president of the pro-life group Movement for a Better America, has researched the economic impact of abortion since 1995.
“We found that the 50.5 million surgical abortions since 1970 have cost the U.S. an astonishing $35 trillion dollars," in lost Gross Domestic Product, he told LifeNews.com on Monday. “However, if you include all the babies lost to IUDs, RU-486, sterilization, and abortifacients, the number climbs to $70 trillion."
“Aggressive population control has exacted a huge price in future economic growth that can never be recovered,” he told LifeNews.com.
Howard indicates the estimates are based on GDP per capita per year times the cumulative number of abortions since 1970.
He said that is a more conservative approach than that used by government agencies, such as the EPA -- which employs an “estimated statistical life” as a benchmark for its cost/benefit analyses for new regulations.
A typical ESL averages about $7.8 million per human life and Howard says using that as a standard shows the cost for all abortions to date would be more than 11 times his estimate, or an excess of $390 trillion.
The question of the economic impact of abortion has come up before.
Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute said last year that “When you look at the projections that show our population aging rapidly over the next few decades, when you see our economy and government programs such as Social Security risking bankruptcy, you can see that the United States’ annual 0.9% population growth rate is not enough." http://www.lifenews.com/nat2662.html
Howard has been warning since 1997 that the US faced a major financial crisis based on ongoing demographic trends.
In 1997, he wrote: “I see little hope that we can avoid an eventual crash on Wall Street that will make the 1930’s looking like cashing in your cards after a bad game of Monopoly."
He cites the Soviet Union as an example of a nation that allowed unlimited abortions to wreck its economy.
“The main reason for their collapse was internal – 300 abortions for every 100 live birth," he said. "Right now, there are not enough younger women to reverse their population decline. They are expected to lose another 40 million people between now and 2050.”
Related web sites:
Movement for a Better America - http://www.movementforabetteramerica.org
Pro-Life Ping
Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
That’s the bubble I’m talking about.
It certainly has, but it's also helpful to show the pro-abortion crowd how abortion is harming them regardless of their lack of morals.
I’m with you. I’m not entirely certain that the mothers of these murdered millions would have ensured that they would have become productive members of society anyway. Regardless, I’d still have preferred that the murdered millions been ‘allowed’ the chance to grow and thrive. Now, we can only postulate.
Such a RIDICULOUS way to look at this...there are so many real arguments against abortion, to use this as one makes you look foolish.
What about the ADDED COST of having to ‘import’ 20+ million illegal aliens, to “do the jobs the murdered fetuses won’t (can’t) do”?!
I have wondered about this - 50 plus million people buying groceries, cars, homes would dramatically change our economy.
Oh really? Can you name one that would persuade YOU to become anti-abortion and pro-life?
Do you deny that a sudden and dramatic decline in birth rates will have an economic impact down the road? Especially when it is the largest generation in history doing it?
Has it not occurred to you the reason we have so many illegal aliens in the United States is because we don't have enough workers?
Right you are sir!
I prefer the figure “30 million since 2003”, since that is when they were being marketed to, and corporations would be more honest with regard to their true numbers.
A guideline is, when a subgroup reaches 10% of the population, THEN you market to it.
My guess is thus, we have about 40+million.
Impossible to measure this accurately. It is EXTREMELY unlikely that those unwanted children would all be productive members of society.
There’s some chance that we’d be in WORSE economic shape if all those unwanted children had been born into lives of welfare dependency.
Furthermore, since the natural abortion rate outstrips the artificial one by a factor of ten or so...we’d be better off focusing on fertility treatments for those who want children, and on reducing pollutants in our environment such as estrogen-mimicing chemicals that reduce male sperm counts or others that increase harmful mutation rates.
Don't forget paying taxes, especially Social Security which WILL collapse if nothing is done and that is probably one of the unspoken reasons why so many were so eager to put tens of millions of illegal aliens on the tax rolls.
You have NO CLUE what you are talking about. The push for contraception and abortion caused the Baby Boomers to reproduce at an artificially low rate. Now they are about to start retiring and they will destroy the economy in the process.
Your argument is ridiculous.
Its indicative of the God like omniscience of the pro-choice movement.
We know best who should live or die.
Obviously the aborted ones were going to be drains on society.
Its not possible to conceive that actions outside of killing the child could be more culpable as to why someone has to be in poverty or on welfare.
Abortion is a human economic catastrophe. This is the singular reason that China cannot surpass the United States as an economic power. What they have done demographically is an incomprehensible economic nightmare in regard to aging.
bump
Sadly, they don’t care. They don’t care when you tell them that Planned Parenthood is orchestrating genocide. They don’t care when you tell them that letting an aborted baby die in a closet is infanticide. They don’t care when you tell them that it’s a child not a choice.
It’s a slow but steady erosion of morality.
How do you repay back 50 million aborted lives?
You are greatly misinformed. Due to activists from the Western world, the birth rate in the third world has collapsed.
wow
I just always kinda thought that a society that honored God by sharing his position on the sanctity of life might receive his blessings and therefore prosper!
Specious argument. What they are attempting to measure is both immeasurable and, in this context, irrelevant.
Nonsense, they are estimating the lifetime economic impact of each aborted person at $700,000, the government's actual estimate is over $7 million. In reality, they are lowballing the impact.
Post of the day....Perfect.
The pro-murder crowd loves to talk about how adoption rates have risen so much. What they fail to mention is that nearly all adoptions are of children from eastern Europe, China and other similar countries. Essentially, there are no American babies to adopt regardless of race or gender.
Slightly off topic but I was wondering what you guys think of this idea. Obama has announced a one time $3000 tax credit for small businesses that hire a new full time worker.
What if McCain says “ that’s a good idea but $3000 is nor enough, I propose to make it a $75,000 credit and make it permanent.”
What this would equate to is essentially one heck of a good tax break for employers. If Obama says it’s too much or can’t be permanent then it makes him out as the bad guy.
I am staunchly pro-life for principles unrelated to economics. That being said, this is still a valid consideration. And when those illegals, many of which are working on phony SS numbers and being forced to contribute through witholding taxes decide they should get the same benefits as though they had been here legally, well, the Ponzi scheme of SS will go down much harder and likely with violence. It ain’t gonna be pretty, friends.
> I just always kinda thought that a society that honored God by sharing his position on the sanctity of life might receive his blessings and therefore prosper!
Indeed so. In fact there was a famous quote about America being great because she is good, and that should she cease to be good then she should cease to be great.
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
Abortions are just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure that the cost of birth control is even more staggering. Imagine how things would be different if your cohort was larger than the babyboom cohort.
We'll never know - how sad.
So where is Obamanation going to get additional money for additional abortions?
There’s an upside to this, as Margaret Sanger would say with glee, “We’ve euthanized millions of black babies.” And that’s what these horrific abortion mills are really about: keeping the black population as small as possible. It’s too bad blacks don’t understand what’s going on.
There has never been a country in the history of history that lost its morality that didn’t also loose its prosperity.
50 million abortions.
This number doesn’t include the number of children who could have born to those who were aborted, from 1973 to 1991. We are probably missing another 10 million people.
Total is 20% of the total population.
And they would all be potential Social Security payers.
That is why we have 20 million illegal immigrants in this country, and the powers that be want MORE.
Thanks for this. There are consequences to sin.
Exactly and what makes the problem even more pronounced is that the abortion holocaust started just as the bulk of the baby boomers were entering their prime reproductive years (the OLDEST of the baby boomers was only 27 when Roe was decided). The baby boomer generation created a demographic crisis by reproducing at an artificially low rate (the surge in contraception from the early 1960s onward has also played a role).
Excellent point,WB.
Also, the 50 million estimate is on the low side. Some states like California, do NOT report abortion statistics, and california is a huge state.
The only way we have statistics is that the Alan Guttmacher Institute compiles them—and they are a subsidiary of Planned Parenthood.
So there is a built in bias toward underreporting from the get-go.
“There’s some chance that we’d be in WORSE economic shape if all those unwanted children had been born into lives of welfare dependency.
Furthermore, since the natural abortion rate outstrips the artificial one by a factor of ten or so...we’d be better off focusing on fertility treatments for those who want children, and on reducing pollutants in our environment such as estrogen-mimicing chemicals that reduce male sperm counts or others that increase harmful mutation rates.”
I am glad you are not my mother.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.