Number of Abortions Since 1973
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The number of abortions performed in the US since 1973 is approach 50 million. An easy number to read, and a hard one to comprehend.The Mississippi Baptist Convention has sought to put together a visual reminder: the Memorial to the Missing (pictured to the right), being filled with 50 million pennies.
Here's another way to try to get your mind around the number. If you add up the populations to the following states, they equal about 50 million.
- Kentucky
- Oregon
- Oklahoma
- Connecticut
- Iowa
- Mississippi
- Arkansas
- Kansas
- Utah
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- West Virginia
- Nebraska
- Idaho
- Maine
- New Hampshire
- Hawaii
- Rhode Island
- Montana
- Delaware
- South Dakota
- Alaska
- North Dakota
- Vermont
- Wyoming
If you faint in the day of adversity,
your strength is small.
Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not repay man according to his work?
posted by JT at Saturday, January 03, 2009
29 Comments:
Isn't that like half a million dollars in pennies?
Absolutely it is, maybe they thought with the economy the way it is, this was the best investment they could find.
I sure hope those pennies are locked down.
That's the population of half of the states. How sad.
Sobering stuff.
Many Christians voted for Barack Obama, another fellow Christian, who's pro-abortion despite saying that the issue of life's conception is above his pay grade.
Many Christians voted for Barack Obama, another fellow Christian, who's pro-abortion despite saying that the issue of life's conception is above his pay grade.
...a comment which ignores the very topic of this post, which is the number of abortions since 1973. there have been several supposedly 'pro-life' presidents in this period who never had to cast a vote on abortion, and under whose watch the number of abortions continued to climb.
for some reason it's ok with a lot of Christians that we have someone totally incompetent in the White House as long as he SAYS he is pro-life, regardless of whether or not the opp'y to influence abortion legislation appears (and it doesn't - or at least hasn't). a collapsed world economy will likely influence as many childrens' lives over the next couple of years as the abortion tally over the last three and a half decades.
further, UNHCR says 4.7 million Iraqi refugees have been displaced since the war in Iraq began - but 'Christians' can still hold up Bush as the 'pro-life' president and denigrate Obama who has yet to serve a day in the office.
my reaction when i read the initial post was, ok, so what are we going to do about it? perhaps more accurately, what is our goal in what we do about it? and my answer is ... well, you probably already know what it is, since i've said it here before.
but to just lament the number occasionally or to think that voting for someone every four years because they can make a verbal stance on an issue that they know they'll never have to be held to ... what is that accomplishing?
you already know the answer to that, too.
mike rucker
fairburn, georgia, usa
mikerucker.wordpress.com
That's shocking and sad.
Mike Rucker,
"We" have been trying to do something about it since Roe became law. "We" have passed abortion restrictions at the state and local level that serve to limit the ease with which young girls can get abortions. These include things like parental notification, late term abortion bans, etc. "We" have been trying to limit the ability of the government to force health practitioners to provide abortions against their conscientious objections. "We" have tried to care for those girls considering abortion through crisis clinics.
It is utterly dishonest for you to pretend that all the pro-life movement it vote for a president every four years. thousands of people have devoted millions of hours, not just to overturning Roe, but to minimizing its damage through practical effort. And the first bill that this president says that he wants to sign is one that eliminates every restriction "We" have worked for in the past thirty years.
HE wants to force nurses and doctors that are Christians to provide abortions against their religious objections. HE wants 13 and 14 year old girls to be able to get an abortion without parental consent , and without punishing the dirtbags that stautorily raped them. HE wants babies aborted and 8 and 9 months gestation. HE wants the force the entire Catholic Hospital network to provide abortions or close its doors.
You sir are a hypocrite and liar of the first order when you pretend that "We" have not done anything to minimize abortion or that Obama isn't intent on increasing the number of babies that die every year. If YOU are not doing the same thing "We" are to oppose his barbarity then may the blood of those babies be laid at your feet as well as his.
i appreciate your passionate response, brittany. my guess is the 'we' you refer to is a very minor %age of those who make a candidate's stance on abortion the central issue on which they vote.
but please show me where i was a hypocrite and a liar if you are going to use those vicious words at me. i am nothing of the sort, and nothing in my previous comment was hypocritical nor did it misstate any facts.
let me offer this: you and your 'WEs' need to look at where you are focusing your efforts and compare them to the number that was originally referenced in JT's post here. then ask: is this the right approach? is our goal to make the emotional, mental and physical consequences on a woman or girl with an unintended pregnancy as difficult for them as possible, so they'll 'learn a lesson'? does the woman even figure into the 'solution' at all?
i applaud one statement of yours: "We" have tried to care for those girls considering abortion through crisis clinics. my daughter, in fact, spent new years' eve volunteering at a dinner benefiting The Pregnancy Resource Center here, an outfit run by the church we attend.
overturning roe v wade, while it may happen (it won't), will not solve the problem, and you know it. again, it will come down to upper-class whites and the residents of 'blue' states having access, while poor blacks - the ones most in need of efforts to REDUCE unwanted pregnancy - continue to languish in the 'have-nots'.
obama is a pragmatic realist, not a nazi, as you want to paint him.
i'm sure this article will rub you the wrong way, but it's really the only answer that a pluralistic society like the US can pursue, outside of setting up a theocracy.
mike rucker
fairburn, georgia, usa
mikerucker.wordpress.com
Mike,
The idea that we only have abortion is because it is necessary due to poverty is laughable. I know that it is hobby horse of the left, but we are the most economically prosperous nation in the history of the world and kill our children at a rate previously unheard of. We kill for convenience. Period. Compare the living conditions of the poorest American girl seeking an abortion and you will find someone almost infinitely wealthy compared with the developing world, yet those who are truly poor in third world countries somehow manage to "need" fewer abortions despite their poverty. Does poverty make raising children more difficulty? Yes. Does it make murdering them necessary? Not by a long shot.
Me calling you a liar and a hypocrite is based on silently reading your comments for the past 9 months. You never cease to make apologies for those that oppose Christianity or seek to murder children or undermine the basic tenets of biblical faith and never seize an opportunity to applaud Christians "doing good" you must just forget to read the blog on those days.
Obama is a pragmatist, but that doesn't mean he isn't doing evil things. The politicians that ignored scripture, or twisted it, to continue the slave trade were also pragmatists, and before you ask, yes, I do think the two are moral equivalents. Saying that one human can be treated as property because of the color of his skin is no less sinful than saying that another can be treated as the property of another due to his age. Pragmatism doesn't excuse evil behavior, claiming Christianity doesn't excuse evil behavior, be it slavery or abortion, and he will have to answer for his policy proposals just like those presidents that continued the slave trade for 100 years. I do believe they were Christians (generally) and possibly even godly men, but they will have to give account for the slaves that died shackled drowning in the Atlantic or hung from trees in the south because of their policies and those politicians that choose to support abortion will likewise.
Lastly, due to the article that you linked, what do you think was the number one reason given by southerners for continuing slavery? Economics. Slavery was simply necessary because southerners were so poor that you couldn't expect them to eek out a living without free labor. Funny how the sin changes but the excuses for it are the same.
The idea that we only have abortion is because it is necessary due to poverty is laughable.
did i say that? i only argued that overturning roe v wade would lead to an unfair availability of abortion.
Does poverty make raising children more difficulty? Yes. Does it make murdering them necessary? Not by a long shot.
did i say that? what i would ask is this: does lack of poverty or living in the 'right' state mean someone should not have to face these challenges of raising children in poverty?
...never seize an opportunity to applaud Christians "doing good" you must just forget to read the blog on those days.
as a matter of fact, it's you who must have ignored this blog, for even within the past week, i applauded an effort to get used bibles out to pastors who aren't as materialistic as most of us who have twenty different bibles going unread on our shelves. and i took a very anti-pornography stance, as well - admitting some personal struggles while the rest of the people on this blog seemed to pretend it was only 'someone else's' problem.
as to your point about me voicing opposition to 'Christianity': if you really and truly read my posts (which i would highly recommend, btw), you would see that i oppose certain perversions of Jesus' message - primarily those that seem to be totally based on 'doctrine' or 'truth' (i'm being generous there) and completely void of the grace which made Jesus such a contrast to the Pharisees.
but back to the issue at hand, abortion: at some point you will realize that the legal route to attempt to significantly reduce the number of abortions in the US will make little difference in the number of abortions performed. hopefully, at that point you'll put your (unfair, and unChristian) judgments of me aside and work in avenues that just might effect the changes we all would like to see.
sincerely,
the liar,
the hypocrite
and the wardrobe
aka mike rucker
fairburn, georgia, usa
mikerucker.wordpress.com
Just awful.
Shame on Obama voters who claim to be Christians. What will the Lord think of you voting for a supporter of the massacre of the innocents?
Mike, this president you imply is pro-life in word only has also given more in foreign relief for the AIDS crisis than any leader in history of any country. He also legally changed the term "fetus" to "unborn child," and he has worked to reduce public funding for abortions, particularly overseas. Additionally, having a pro-life president who talks about it often and stands strong against it is important for the arena of public discourse; even in a small way, it impacts the "attitude" about unborn children. These are not small things.
You talk with disdain about "talk," yet talk is the only thing Obama has had going for him. He's never shown leadership or balls or action or resistance to corruption on any issue of significance, with one exception...his passionate defense of abortion.
I would agree with you that it is not through the presidency that we will stop abortions, but that wasn't the point of the original piece. Should we not remind people of the numbers? Should we not make plain how widespread this evil has been?
I would be willing to bet money that if there was a similar display that showed the number of lives lost in the war on terror, you would passionately defend its importance and not denounce it for lacking the appropriate follow-up suggestions.
(a) thanks, dallas, for continuing brittany's misrepresentation of the things i have said here.
(b) reducing funding for abortion is not the answer to the problem.
(c) i would hope that you, too, would passionately defend the importance of the number of lives lost in the 'war on terror'. otherwise, 'pro-life' rings kind of hollow, doesn't it?...
(d) ...which was one of the main points i've been making all along. thanks for proving that, given time, true hyprocrisy reveals its colors quite nicely.
(e) obama has much more than talk going for him, and your statement in light of his leadership even these past two months in the absolute absence of any from the real president reveals your bias, your refusal to respect a leader that your theology says God ordained, and your pettiness in having your own narrow-minded views revealed for what they truly are.
but thanks for playing.
howie, no deal.
-mr
Mike,
You said:
overturning roe v wade, while it may happen (it won't), will not solve the problem, and you know it. again, it will come down to upper-class whites and the residents of 'blue' states having access, while poor blacks - the ones most in need of efforts to REDUCE unwanted pregnancy - continue to languish in the 'have-nots'.
So, in your mind, abortion is a valid means of reducing "unwanted pregnancy", and a culture is better off for having access to it?
hmmm... i can see how that might read that way. but, no, it's not - the need is for appropriate sex education and support within the lower classes mentioned. my point is that the upper class will never lack for anything that may reduce unwanted pregnancy even outside the availability of safe and legal abortions. others, like poor blacks, will still have the inherent problems causing unwanted pregnancy if abortion is made illegal.
which is why solutions like brittany's - which, in a nutshell, is outlaw all abortions - is akin to starting to build a house on the second floor. you need to address the foundational issues of this many-sided problem - unwanted pregnancy - and get the appropriate pieces in place first to address them before thinking you can just 'ban abortion'.
and, again, it goes back to the claim to be 'pro-life' - does the 'life' that you're 'pro' about end with the unborn child? to many of the most ardent abortion foes, it seems to.
thanks for letting me clarify.
mr
The number of abortions since (1973), did anyone notice this other than myself? This is the number since 1973 folks. It doesn't appear that anyone is weeping for these lost lives other than in word only seeing how quickly the conversation turns to Obama. I will be more convinced that you are really disturbed when you do something that makes a difference other than debate on blogs. How about being grateful for the mothers who did not choose to abort but rather placed the child up for adoption.
BTW, Obama has not even served one day in office, what does this post have to do with him?
Tomorrow, instead of spending a lot of time talking about Obama, which isn't going to make any difference in the world, use your time to search out adoption agencies and see how you can make a real difference, if you are serious, otherwise, cut the Obama rhetoric. There are children that need you!!
"BTW, Obama has not even served one day in office, what does this post have to do with him?"
Another Obama voter tries to quieten his conscience. God knows those who voted for the pro-murder candidate.
Some commenter above (probably Mike Rucker) essentially wondered whether repeal of Roe v. Wade would have any effect.
I should like to ask this in response: What were the number of abortions done annually prior to the Roe v. Wade decision?
Then let's compare that number (let's say the annual average of 35 years before 1973) and compare it with the annual average of the 35 years since 1973.
This would then give us some indication of the legislative impact of Roe v. Wade and why it's important for pro-lifers to work for repeal of Roe v. Wade.
This post has been removed by the author.
Ok, one more and then I promise I'll return to lurking...
others, like poor blacks, will still have the inherent problems causing unwanted pregnancy if abortion is made illegal.
But, in the absence of a solution to those problems, you view abortion as a valid means of reducing "unwanted pregnancy"? You see this troubled segment of society better off for having access to abortion?
Your "clarification" seems to be a confirmation of my first comment.
$500,000 as a memorial. Says a lot to me.
Perhaps this memorial could stand until Roe is overturned, and then the money be donated for the cause of life in some way.
I voted against Obama, because he is pro-infanticide, pro-partial-birth abortion, and wants to make abortion Constitutionally set and engraved in granite.
he may well make abortion right, and even something that is enforced on Hospitals that stand against abortion. I saw them debate this whole subject on O'Reilly with Allan Combs.
Combs said, "Wat if a poor gets pregnant, and the only hospital close doesn't have abortions. Are we going to make her travel to another hospital."
Implication, this hospital, and staff should have to make abortion available for this poor pregnant girl.
I would think Obama would agree.
And the other thing is that the Supreme Court will be having new judges coming on board. Who will Obama, and then Congress want to fill those spots?
Bottom line is this evil, which God hates, is really God's hand allowing us to kill innocent babies, and so it is a judgment against this nation, IMO.
i think your questions are somewhat naive, mike.
perhaps i should ask you: when (if) RvW gets 'overturned', what do you see happening? will it go to the states? is that acceptable? are you more 'pro-life' or 'pro-constitution'?
if abortion is made illegal, how you will enforce it? and how you will deal with all the corollary issues of determining whether or not a woman may have performed her own abortion? will a miscarriage be murder on the mother's part? will someone who causes a miscarriage be liable for murder? how many doctors will the government retain to examine every woman for signs of a terminated pregnancy?
if your solution only results in making it harder for one segment of the population to have access to a currently legal procedure, is that a truly Christian solution?
the world isn't black and white ... in anything. were it as simple as thinking well, we outlaw abortion, and all abortion will disappear, and we'll all live happily ever after, perhaps your questions would have pragmatic relevance. as it is, they deal in a hypothetical that fails to approach reality.
so many people on this blog were fans of john mccain because he said he opposed abortion. however, he was against a constitutional amendment - which is the only way to fully ban abortion across all states. so mccain was essentially having his cake and eating it, too: appearing to be against abortion - and cater to the evangelical vote - but, in the end, really no different than obama in the final result of the availability of abortion he'd allow. of course, a lot of people on this blog ate that cake, refusing to think things through to the end and what mccain's stance really meant.
in our society, abortion should remain safe and legal.
reducing the need for it is the only practical solution. will it reduce abortions to zero? not at all. but neither will outlawing abortion. in fact, with abortion outlawed, the chances of taking the mother's life along with the unborn child increases dramatically.
is that really a 'pro-life' solution?
mike rucker
fairburn, georgia, usa
mikerucker.wordpress.com
"in our society, abortion should remain safe and legal."
It's not completely safe. They have problems, when an arm is left in the womb, and other problems.
Have you ever seen an abortion Mike?
It's gruesome to see a baby have it's head torn off. It's a baby created in God's image.
We should pray real hard about thinking abortion is a necessary evil.
And the doctors who kill the babies are making tons of money. And our tax dollars will be even more so helping with this through Obama, unless the Lord touches his heart, and he sees a child as a child, and not a punishment.
To those arguing with "Spud Tooley"...
Save your breath. You are up against a post modern mind who obviously downplays the wisdom of God for his own.
Truth is that abortion is an abomination. And for a nation to condone it is a heinous sin against God for which that nation will eventually be judged - God will not be mocked. All of the pragmatic issues, while important, are secondary. Also lest there be any confusion. Abortion IS illegal in the US - we have murder laws. It is also unconstitutional - we protect the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of individuals. Abortion is illegal but condoned by an unconstitutional judiciary that should be impeached for what it has done. Period.
Tooley's arguments are hogwash and not worthy of reply.
Harley Alderson
I am so curious to the posters here so quick to defend Obama. Doesn't anyone find it ironic that over the past 8 years even the weather has been blamed on Bush?? He is in a VERY public position and likely the most visable leadership position in the WORLD and he makes his opinions and policies without apology why should anyone express them self LESS directly in regards to FIFITY MILLION children dying? and they are DYING!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anything at all that can be done to save even ONE seems worthy to me as compared to supporting the obscene laws and policies proposed and already in place!!
Mr Tooley, if your heart is clear before the one true God then pray tell what you would have us do that would be a "worthy" pursuit in saving the lives of even a few of the BABIES!!!!
Our world is SO so SO twisted.
... the right will seem wrong and the wrong will seem right .....
Funny how Mike thinks that dealing with murder supported by his pseudo-messiah cannot be contained by black and white arguments, yet he fails to ever deal with the current president in shades of grey only "Bush is evil, the war on terror is evil, Bush is incompetent"
He wants us to extend some form of charity to Obama that he has failed to ever give to Bush.
Rucker, this would be an example of the hypocrisy I spoke about above.
Robin and Brittany are the same, just depends on whether or not my wife is logged in or I am
Tooley's arguments are hogwash and not worthy of reply.
so, uh, thanks for replying, harley.
if at first you can't debate an issue, proceed to name-calling, as so many of you have done. so nice to be among fellow Christians who can respectfully share discourse on difficult issues.
of course, they called Jesus a drunkard and a glutton, didn't they...
since you've all decided to attack the messenger instead of the message - not too surprising, after all; seems to be the tact du jour here most days - i'll move onto another topic.
sincerely,
the post-modern hypocrite liar washer of hogs who can't be a Christian because he voted for Obama
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