Just the other day, I was out scouting locations for a new film project and drove past one of Nashville’s abortion clinics. It’s a drab, nondescript building. Across the street, four people were sitting in lawn chairs, praying. It was quiet and strangely ordinary as I drove away.
Abortion had already been on my mind in light of three articles I recently read. The first explains how Democrats in 2012 have “firmly and unyieldingly” embraced abortion rights in a new and absolute way. The next was about Roman Catholic bishops and priests speaking out from the pulpit against Obama on the issue of abortion, contraception and Obamacare. The final article asked the question ‘Is it a sin to vote for Obama and the Democrats?‘ and hinged its answer on the question of abortion.
So, what does this have to do with economics? Pretty much everything.
As I hope to explain, when you see the economic consequences of abortion over the long run, you realize that 40 years of abortion in America is one of the primary causes of our economic problems. It is a demographic issue, pure and simple.
Furthermore – and if you read this post, you’ll realize I’m not overstating this – any vote for a Democrat is a vote for the ultimate economic downfall of our nation. As you will see, this has nothing to do with economic policies per se and everything to do with policies on abortion.
The late Larry Burkett penned an exceptionally prescient article in 1998 entitled The George Bailey Effect: Abortion on Demand and the Implications for America’s Future. His argument is quite simple: the death of tens of millions of producers and consumers alongside the loss of tens of millions of their potential children creates an economic black hole that slowly and inevitably sucks a society into it.
Part of what makes the article so fascinating is looking at his predictions in light of our current economy. Social security, for instance, is nearly insolvent for the simple fact that more beneficiaries are taking money out of it than young workers are putting into it. He explains:
This growing parity between the old and the young is at the heart of the demographic challenges that face Medicare and Social Security. Incredible as it may seem, by the time the peak of the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, the number of abortions since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision will equal the number of births in the baby boom. “If only one-third of those who have been aborted were available to start work on their 18th birthday,” speculated USA Today, “the demise of Social Security would be put off for decades.”
He points to Japan – a nation with abortion on demand since 1948 – as the perfect picture of the modern, industrialized nation that does not have enough workers to support a growing economy in light of the mountain of retirees. And everyone knows that if an economy isn’t growing, it’s shrinking. Japan has been in an economic quagmire for nearly 20 years – and there’s no end in sight. He asks:
Will America, having lost some 35 million lives to abortion, experience a Japanese-like fall as our baby boom generation retires? We can only wait and see.
That was in 1998; the count is now over 50 million abortions. And when did the Boomers start retiring? If 1946 was the first official year of the Baby Boom, then add 65 and you get…2011.
What it means economically is that all the entitlement programs simply don’t have enough workers to pay for them. Putting aside the fact that most of these programs were doomed from the start (you can’t redistribute wealth indefinitely), Burkett’s argument means that abortion has hastened their doom by many decades. It’s a simple issue of taxation: the government can’t tax people who aren’t there. This chart shows it clearly:
1992 was the first year that those children not born in 1973 (the year abortion became legal) would not enter the workforce. Burkett just continues to add them up to achieve 31 million aborted workers by 2022. But since over 50 million people have been aborted as of 2012, his numbers are highly conservative, even inaccurately low. It is true that not all would enter the workforce; but the majority would have. And most would have had children. This only means these numbers should be much larger.
But here’s a curious observation: if the current national debt is $16 trillion, and we know that Burkett’s numbers are too low, then much of our current debt problem is a direct result of killing over 50 million of our own people. He explains:
Since most people give substantially more to government than they receive, the cumulative effect is a significant and unrecoverable loss to the U.S. treasury. This growing loss will exacerbate the growing imbalance between government spending and government revenue in the early decades of the 21st century.
Did you catch that? Exacerbate the growing imbalance between spending and revenue. We’re talking trillions of dollars of imbalance. And such an imbalance is always the sign of an approaching and wide-spread impoverishment of a nation. We aren’t the first nation to try this; spending more than one takes in always leads to the same results.
Now, I am no fan of giving lots of money to the government. But the fact that people can give money to the government means they are producing something for themselves, for their families, and for society – regardless of how much the government takes. Yet the tens of millions of people who are missing from our country represent an economic disaster ultimately of unknown proportions. After all, how many Bill Gates’, George Lucas’, and Thomas Edisons’ were lost to the world forever? Men and women whose contributions to society would revolutionize our economic lives? Not to mention the countless blue and white collar workers who fulfill every function in our society and make all our lives that much better? It is a loss impossible to fathom.
Of course, this all runs counter to the prevailing Malthusian idea that a shrinking population is economically good for a nation. The late Julian Simon exploded that myth multiple times over, and instead showed that modern nations like the United States and European countries only grow economically healthier and more robust as their populations expand. But, if their populations begin to decline, watch out: it is a sure road to poverty.
This is the economic curse of abortion. When a nation begins to kill off tens of millions of its own people, there are drastic and long-lasting economic consequences. It is the slow strangulation of an economy that may take generations to reveal, but which cannot be avoided. The only long-term solution is to stop the killing immediately. There is no short-term solution for the millions of lives already lost.
Which brings us to where we are today: facing another election with two parties diametrically opposed to each other on the issue of abortion. Ultimately, whether or not each party has a good immediate economic policy means far less than its overall policy on abortion. As Burkett explains:
Abortion, even if all moral arguments are totally discounted, cannot be ignored in framing public policy. Simply writing off abortion as a “moral” or a “religious” issue is a short-sighted approach that fails to reckon its economic and demographic consequences.
What does this mean for you and me?
The Democratic Party has committed itself to being the party that supports abortion rights in all circumstances. President Obama has committed himself to being the President who has acted most directly to ensure that abortion happens as often as people want it. If elected to another term, President Obama will continue to appoint Supreme Court justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade, and he will veto any bill Congress passes that seeks to limit or stop abortion. President Obama is committed to abortion.
Which means that the Democratic Party and President Obama are committed to the economic downfall of our nation. There is no other possibility – it is a demographic necessity born of their commitment to abortion.
Look around: the economic curse of abortion is already upon us. Our only long-term hope is to appoint elected officials who can act immediately to change the course we are on. It will not be simple and it will not be easy, but it is absolutely necessary for our long-term survival as a nation.
