Posted on 05/12/2022 9:52:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Life should never be reduced to economics.
Yet, in the wake of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that could overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion supporters have resorted to shocking claims that limiting abortions will hurt the economy.
During a Senate Banking Committee hearing on May 10, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about the “real-world economic consequences” for American women if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Yellen said this “would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.”
She went on to argue that “abortion helped lead to increased labor force participation. It enabled many women to finish school, that increased their earning potential.”
In his question, Menendez cited analysis from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research to set up Yellen’s answer. The moment was clearly scripted, and not just a spontaneous exchange. Either way, it’s a bad look.
More precisely, it’s bad ethics and bad economics.
On the ethical side: It ignores the life and inherent value of the unborn child. Federal law (the Unborn Victims of Violence Act) and dozens of state laws recognize unborn children as human beings. But abortion advocates presume unborn children only deserve protections if their lives were planned and desired.
But even if we reduce the matter to economics, Yellen’s analysis focuses on a tiny speck of a much larger picture. Her claim lacks what Henry Hazlitt called the “art of economics” in his classic “Economics in One Lesson.” “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy,” he wrote. “It consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”
In the case at hand, Yellen fixated on the short-term labor force participation of mothers. Yes, having a child can easily lead to hundreds fewer hours spent in the formal labor force. But is the value of the time parents spend raising children of no value? Are children’s future contributions to society over many decades of life worth nothing?
It’s almost painful to spell this out since people are more than economic actors. But abortion activists may try to make Yellen’s claim a talking point. So, it needs to be answered.
Our economy is essentially the total of all the goods and services that the people in it produce. More producing people means more economic output — at least over the medium-to-long run. More abortions, however, means fewer people and so, ultimately, less output.
It’s bizarre that Yellen would say that limiting abortions would “have very damaging effects” on the economy. She can only say this by restricting the time horizon in question. She knows better. Her statement is counter to then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s assertion in 2017 that slow labor force growth was contributing to slow economic growth. Moreover, in our heavily indebted nation, every economic model shows lower birth rates harming America’s fiscal health and sustainability.
Since Roe v. Wade, an estimated 63 million babies have been aborted in the U.S. Over 35 million of them would now be old enough to participate in the labor force. We can’t assume a one-for-one increase in the population and labor force. Still, there would surely be more people alive and working today if it weren’t for Roe v. Wade.
Some abortion advocates have argued that children who are aborted would likely have faced greater adversity than those who are not. As a result, such people, as adults, would be of lower value to society, or even a net drag on it.
But the beauty of the American dream is that our fate is not sealed at birth. Millions of people who started life in a hard spot still grew up to do great things. Sadly, tens of millions of babies have had their fates sealed before they had the chance to pursue that dream.
We will never know the lifesaving health advancements those unborn Americans would have created. We will never enjoy the infrastructure they would have built. The world will never benefit from the humanitarian organizations they would have founded, or the loving relationships they would have formed.
These are just some of the real costs of abortion on demand. Mere economics shouldn’t figure in our laws protecting life. But to the extent they are, no sound economic analysis would reduce human life to a cost.
Originally published at The Daily Signal.
Rachel Greszler is research fellow in economics, budget, and entitlements in the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, of the Institute for Economic Freedom, at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research.
Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., focuses on protecting life, marriage, and religious liberty as the William E. Simon senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society. Richards also is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute and executive editor of The Stream.
I dunno, Judas seemed to think that 30 pieces of silver were worth one carpenter/motivational speaker....
Well, she sure laid bare what it’s all about for the left. To them, babies are nothing but inconveniences to be disposed of.
She is in competition for the prize of most repugnant creature on Earth, along with chuck schumer, jerry nadler, george soros and justin trudeau.
I’d be willing to go along with abortions, if we applied the concept of killing ‘people’ across all ages.
Thus, we could get rid of people like Yellen if we deemed it necessary and we thought of her as an ‘inconvenience’.
Same for Biden and Pelosi and Schumer and Nadler and Schiff. All idiots and very inconvenient to the American people. Never too late to abort them.
I don’t need an article to tell me the obvious.
Boundaries Little Hobit Woman. Do your job. You are not meeting expectations and taking on new business concerns outside your core duties and responsibilities is grounds for termination. Get our economic house in order. That’s your job. Grinding up fetuses is certainly not.
Absolutely, Yellen said out loud what all liberals believe, babies are just a utility, everything can have price put on it, including human life, once the calculation isn’t in their favor, discard it with the trash.
It’s barbaric, it’s very eugenic of them.
Stupid old lady.
An economy built on consumer spending will ultimately do best when people have lots of money to piss away and no personal obligations to temper their expectations.
This is why major companies like GM and Disney have been promoting abortion and deviant sexual relationships for years.
After all these years this is the post I am most proud of:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1821509/posts
The premise that it will “damage” the economy is laughable on its face.
Abortion is a 1 time event... you have an abortion and you are done.... The cost of an abortion is grossly less than the cost of a live birth... So, idea that it will negatively impact the economy is LAUGHABLE from just that 1 thing.
However a new life, will also require care, feeding, nurturing, housing, clothing, entertainment, etc etc etc for its entire life creating a multi decade long consumer, and once raised a multi decade long producer as well.
There is no calculus in the world where you get an abortion is more beneficial to an overall economy than a birth.. NONE... no way in the macro you can get there.
Sure ending abortion will end abortion services and those that provide them and be a harm to those individuals economically, but the money spent in that industry will be made up infinitely times over by another person being born and will need things its entire life and will work and produce the majority of its life as well...
There is no way in the macro economic analysis abortion is more beneficial than life economically, none.
We, the White race, may already be doomed to extinction because our females find our males uninteresting, even abhorrent.
You’re right.
Yellen thinks working class Americans should NOT have the joys of family - no Christmas dinners or celebrations with our children...
No, adult workers in her mind exist to serve white liberal ‘elites’ and nothing more.
When Yellen wants ‘labor’ she’d rather import it from third world hellholes where the cost of raising a child has already been made - and adults can walk across the border ‘ready to work cheap’. And the little babies and three year olds the cartels bring across to fill whore houses for white liberal ‘elites’? Well, they’ll probably die before they might get ‘assistance’...so those children are OK to ‘import’...
One more reason to hate white liberal ‘elites’... a pox on her house.
This love affair with GDP growth drives me insane. Bunches of women (and men for that matter) were convinced to prioritize the monetized sectors of the economy over the non-monetized household sector (family). We send off Mom and Dad to do monetized work, and then a big chunk of the household sector( child care, house cleaning, cooking (via dining out more), yard work, etc) also gets moved into the monetized economy. Results have been a disaster for marriage, children, and generally society. And even here, abortion, total spiritual and societal issue and the parasites go right to its effect on GDP. Screw GDP!
Baby Face Yellen
Curious??
How many chances should Women get before they make the right decision??
They chose to have sex
they chose to not use Birth Control
They chose to not have their partner use a condom’
They chose Not to use the morning after pill
These are CHOICES they made
Do they really deserve another chance after making these choices?
if helping the economy was a reason to kill a kid, Chelsea and Soeteros kids would be dead! Plenty of high profile leaches in the country.
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