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
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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?
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