The Massive Costs of Abortion

Obviously every abortion costs us another innocent human life. That is of course the greatest cost of all. Each year in Australia we lose 100,000 Australians to this barbaric form of killing, and globally some 45-50 million lives are lost. This genocide is unprecedented in human history, and has exacted a tremendous cost on human life.

But there are other ways at looking at the costs of abortion. Two recent articles have demonstrated that there are other very real costs associated with the abortion holocaust. The first story comes from the UK and is quite an alarming report about serial abortion and the huge public expense that goes with this.

Far too many women, it seems, simply see abortion as an after-the fact form of contraception. And they are often repeat offenders. Some women are having multiple pregnancies dealt with by multiple abortions. And the tax payer is being asked to foot the bill.

Here is how one newspaper report covers the story: “The Health Service is spending around £1million a week providing repeat abortions. Critics said figures revealed yesterday show thousands of women are using the procedure as a form of contraception. It is not unknown for some women to have seven, eight or even nine terminations in their lifetime.

“According to the statistics, single or unmarried women account for five out of every six repeat terminations. Around a third of all abortions carried out in England and Wales are repeats. The figures will fuel the debate on whether abortions, which cost the NHS up to £1,000 each, are being sanctioned as more of a lifestyle choice than a medical requirement.

“In one London borough, half of all abortions are requested by women who have already aborted at least one foetus. In 2010, the latest year for which figures are available, some 189,000 abortions took place. Of these, more than 64,000 terminations were on women who had already aborted a foetus in the past.

“More than 50,000 of them were single or living with a partner; while around 9,500 were married – with the marital status unknown for the rest. Critics of the current legislation said terminations have become just another form of contraception because of the lack of independent counselling at clinics which leads to women making the choice to have an abortion rather than continue with their pregnancy.”

The article features the story of one young woman who had her first abortion at age 12. She then had another at 13, 15 and 16. She says after her first abortion she was told about contraceptives, and was given a contraceptive injection. But then she did not bother to come back to get her booster injections.

The article goes on to detail the number of repeat terminations: “There were 19,295 of them in 2010 [in London]. The North West is next on 7,537; while the West Midlands on 7,190. Figures late last year showed that each abortion costs the NHS an average of £680. It means around £850,000 is spent on repeat abortions every single week in England and Wales. The figures do not include Scotland and Northern Ireland, which means the full UK cost will be around £1million a week.

“Stuart Cowie, a spokesman for pressure group LIFE, said: ‘These figures show that “no questions asked” abortion on demand trivialises the process so much that it is no longer seen as the last resort. We would like to see more counselling offered to women, and more conversations in the classroom about responsibility’.”

The second article which speaks to the costs of abortion comes from the US, and looks at all the lost income of entire generations of people who have been aborted. The article speaks of how these costings were determined: “Our early research focused on the impact of abortion on downstream tax revenues, but we changed to using gross domestic product (GDP) per capita because that’s more indicative of total economic impact.

“Our principal sources were abortions reported by the Guttmacher Institute—a subsidiary of Planned Parenthood—as published in the U.S. Statistical Abstract going back to 1978. We supplemented this with state data for California, Colorado, and New York going back to 1967 (six years before Roe v. Wade). Two million babies were aborted in these states before Roe. We update this data every year and project it to the current month using regression analysis based on most recent trends. Trend adjustments are made annually based on the newest data.

“We use Guttmacher as a source to put our studies beyond challenge from the abortion industry. However, we know these numbers are on the low side because they are based on surveys of abortion providers taken every three to four years, with projections for intervening years using the same kind of regression analysis we use to project the most recent figures. Changes in trend are picked up with each new survey. How much higher might the actual number of abortions be? This number could err by 20 to 30 percent because providers are less likely to report abortions paid for in cash and those with negative outcomes. Former abortion providers like Dr. Nathanson confirm this bias. Center for Disease Control data are even less reliable because many jurisdictions do not legally require reporting.

“Unfortunately, there is no accurate way to estimate the number of abortions caused by abortifacients—including RU-486 abortions, abortions produced by drugs like the morning-after pill, or by IUDs. Unsurprisingly, sexually active women using these methods may have as many as three to four pregnancies and three to four abortions a year. However, no one can carry three or four pregnancies to term in a single year, so we have to discount its economic impact. Normally, such women might carry a pregnancy to term every two or three years. That would have a measurable economic impact, but it is hard to estimate reliably.”

So what were the findings? “Based on these estimates, abortion has cost us an estimated $45 trillion in lost GDP and that loss continues growing by $2.5 trillion each year. We do not currently include second generation lives missing because their putative parents were aborted, but that number is clearly growing and will add to the future loss in GDP. For example, at least half of the current total of 55 million aborted people would currently be in their child-bearing years. Since the leading edge of the abortion generation has reached age 45, that has at least a 15 percent negative impact on current births. We are tracking this indirect effect and may include it in future reports.”

Wow, what a massive amount of lost income. And this is becoming an immense problem all over the West. With declining fertility rates – in big part due to abortion – we are creating an inverted population pyramid, with the largest and growing group at top – the elderly – being propped up by a shrinking group at the bottom – the young.

Simply trying to pay pensions and other welfare benefits to the elderly with a shrinking workforce is becoming increasingly difficult. Less and less births mean less and less workers, which means less and less government revenues to be used to pay for looking after the elderly. It is a massive social and financial problem. And abortion is a leading contributor to all this.

The article offers this conclusion: “Basically, we need to restore the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence ‘that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ That’s the goal we are committed to at the Movement for a Better America. However, a great many of our political, business, education, and even religious leaders are still asleep at the switch or confused about the solutions. Certainly such a counter-revolution is not going to come from the mainstream media, the academic left, pandering politicians, or a corporate environment where the bottom line is the primary benchmark. Well-intended economic solutions from the left or right can’t resolve these costly social issues. Such ‘cures’ may help the business environment and ease the job and real estate markets, but they can’t solve the underlying social malaise.

“Our best hope lies with society’s fundamental social and economic unit—the family. Families make up the warp and woof of our social fabric. Their concern for the future of their children gives them a vision beyond the next quarter or the next election. It was this kind of vision that prompted our founders to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to ‘secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.’ If churches, schools, and pro-life, pro-family groups can tap into that same vision, they can change things dramatically for the better. If they succeed, the economy will take care of itself. Meanwhile, we need to be wary of the wolves in sheep’s clothing—like Planned Parenthood and self-serving politicians—who try to exploit these concerns and use them to destroy the family and the country’s future.”

Quite right. We need to work for a culture of life, and stop the abortion genocide which is so very costly in so very many ways.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2143936/NHS-spends-1m-week-repeat-abortions-Single-women-using-terminations-form-contraceptive.html
http://www.all.org/article/index/id/MTAzNjc/

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