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
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.
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