Life, By the Numbers

From Robert Royal at The Catholic Thing:

Well, to begin with, though all such numbers are a bit uncertain, roughly 55 million people died, globally, last year. And numerous public health organizations intensely scrutinize the slightest increase or decrease in mortality, in a laudable effort to identify what factors may be harming or helping the health of diverse peoples around the world.

That number does not include the number of babies killed by elective abortions, which at one time would have been thought a rare, emergency measure. The Guttmacher Institute, an advocate for abortion, estimates that there are roughly 56 million abortions around the world every year. So allowing for the lack of statistical accuracy, we can say in broad terms that as many innocents are slaughtered every year in the womb as there are deaths from all other causes in the entire world. That’s the kind of mayhem you associate with murderous ideologies like Nazism and Communism, not “reproductive health.”

Because of an ill-advised accord with China, the Vatican refrains from speaking about that government’s persecution, brainwashing, organ harvesting, and interference with the internal life of religious groups, including Catholics. But how about the more than 300 million abortions there since the 1970s, many forced – a number about equal to the entire population of the United States? Or the more than 60 million abortions in America since Roe v. Wade? That’s more or less the population of the United Kingdom or France or Italy; much larger than Spain; a figure close to the populations of Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, and Poland combined.

Would even a materialist utilitarian believe that such prodigal slaughter of the innocents has not and will not have enormous consequences?

At their annual meeting last November, the American bishops, recognizing the moral questions in play during this year’s presidential campaign, tangled over whether abortion was the “pre-eminent” issue.

Or not. (Read more.)

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