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Of Babies And Barbarians

America's war on its unborn
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A reader writes:

Just thought this was worth bringing up.

Vox had a piece today about how both proponents and opponents of abortion are misinformed about the facts of abortion.  Opponents think it is very dangerous whereas it is actually safer than real births.  The statistics that are helpfully provided are – 9 deaths per 1000 live births vs. 0.6 deaths per 1000 abortions.

On the other hand, the article says that proponents of abortion mistakenly think the procedure is rarer than it is i.e. it happens more frequently than we believe.  But funnily enough, no stats are provided to put this in perspective.  I mean its possible proponents may think the rate of abortion is something like 15 per 1000 births when it is actually 25 per 1000 births or something like that. Impossible to know without the data though.

So I checked.  According to the CDC in 2012 (last year with reported data), 699,202 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. The abortion rate for 2012 was 13.2 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 210 abortions per 1,000 live births.  To repeat…for every five births there is one abortion.  91% of these abortions are done within the first trimester and 99% within the first five months.  In the period 2002 – 2011, there were a total of 8.1M abortions reported to the CDC.  I don’t know about you but I am stunned.

Try and spin that through your mind a few times…in the years of the Great War on Terror, 8.1M abortions happened within the walls of the country waging the GWOT. When we talk about this issue…we really should have all the facts on the table.  I have no grand ideas or insights here, but for everybody out there interested in empirical, evidence-based policy, some starting facts might be useful.

8.1M !!!!!!  May God have mercy on us and guide us all….

But … but … they are supposed to be the barbarians! This reader is messing with the Official Story. Good. It needs to be messed with.

I’m guessing by the name of the reader who sent this letter in that he’s a Muslim — which, if true, adds some context to his valid complaint about this country’s regard for human life. We say we want immigrants to assimilate, but it’s important to keep in mind that we are asking them to assimilate to the norms of a nation whose people exterminate about a million of its unborn children each year.

[Note to readers: I’m away from the blog and not approving comments today. I wrote this and all posts appearing on Friday last night. Leave your remarks and I’ll approve them tomorrow. — RD]

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