ProWomanProLife

Whether we make statistics available about abortion does not divide itself on pro-life versus pro-choice lines.

Natalie Hudson Sonnen has this in the National Post today about Canada’s shoddy abortion statistics.

One would think that pro-lifers and pro-choicers could band together on this, given that knowing the numbers is a neutral idea. One would think, but one would likely be wrong.

I think all parents know that having kids has some economic impact on your life, but does this mean that we really need to think hard about the budget when we’re talking about our children? Of course we want our kids to one day go to college, eat healthy organic foods, and go to nice schools, but what does all this talk about how much a child “costs” ultimately do to how we perceive not only our offspring but every other human being in our lives?

I’m asking these questions because of this article today in the New York Times entitled “Mothers of Children With Autism Earn Less”. Well, duh, but how does this information effect our lives?

Mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder are less likely to be employed than mothers of children with no health limitations. They work seven hours less per week, on average, and they earn less: 35 percent less than mothers of children with another health limitation, and 56 percent less than the mothers of children with no health limitations.

Figuring out the exact amount a child may or may not financially cost a family seems to be a morally responsible act on the surface, but putting these figures into practice, letting them effect our decisions, doesn’t reek of the kind of unconditional love I’d like to aspire to as a parent. Either you believe that your bundle of joy, not to mention the elderly and the sick and the generally unemployable, have a value and a dignity irrespective of how much they tap your paycheck, or you value something else entirely.

From the National Post,

Four of Canada’s fastest growing cities are in the West, where Calgary and Edmonton have posted the highest percentage increases in population among the country’s 33 metropolitan areas.

Calgary grew by 12.6% between 2006 and 2011, Edmonton by 12.1%, Saskatoonby 11.4% and Kelowna, B.C., by 10.8%.

Now, I’m not saying that has anything to do with Ruth Lobo Shaw reinstating the pro-life group at Carleton University in 2006, but it IS a coincidence.

The pressure to be sexually active comes at us all from various angles. The ads we see each day run the gamut from subtle ads for “performance enhancing” drugs to use later in life (when some of us may not even want to be all that sexually active) to the more aggressive ones, continuously targeting younger and younger audiences. You can’t escape these images, they’re on bus stops, locker rooms, in a banner on a website, in fact they’re so common that they hardly seem to stand out. As adults, maybe our life experience can buffer some of this imagery, but what about kids, teens who are in the process of figuring themselves out as people? A survey by ESSENCE magazine revealed that,

Black youth report considerable pressure to have sex, according to a new survey of 1,500 Black youth ages 13-21 released by ESSENCE Magazine and The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Of those who have had sex, 47% of those 13-21 (including 21% of those 13-15) say they have been pressured to go further sexually than they wanted to. [...]

Overall, the survey found that almost half of Black teens ages 13 to 21 reported that they have lied to get out of a sexual situation, and 54% of Black males said they feel pressure from their friends to have sex.

But some of the findings in the survey are hopeful. Nearly half of younger children (13-15) say they value their parents’ opinions and that their parents influence whether or not they will be sexually active. This gives parents an opportunity to express to our kids that they’re not expected to have sex.

Press release here:

According to an Abacus Data poll, 40 per cent of respondents think abortion should be available but only funded in medical emergencies, while 11 per cent think abortion should be available but never funded, and 10 per cent do not think abortion should be available at all. In contrast, 30 per cent think abortion should be available and always funded. Another 8 per cent said none of those positions match their view…

The poll also found that 48 per cent want all abortion information – statistics about the number of abortions and how much they cost – to be publicly disclosed, while just 21 per cent do not think these figures need to be released. Furthermore, a whopping 91 per cent of respondents had no idea that the province spends at least $30 million on abortion. This is no doubt tied to the fact that Ontario does not release these numbers. “The abortion industry does not want Ontarians to know that abortion is the most common surgery in Canada. People would be shocked if they knew how many abortions are committed in Canada.” added Golob.

From Gallup,

PRINCETON, NJ — Self-described “pro-choice” and “pro-life” Americans agree about nine major areas of abortion policy, while disagreeing on eight others. Among the areas of consensus, in which a majority of both groups hold the same opinion, especially large percentages are in favor of requiring informed consent for women (86% of pro-choice adults and 87% who are pro-life) and making abortion illegal in the third trimester (79% and 94%).

Socioeconomic factors, not your “wantedness”, will play a big factor in how successful you are in life. This article from The Telegraph shows that the educational success of a child has very little to do with being planned or unplanned, and everything to do with being rich or poor.

A study has found that pupils whose parents did not intend to have a baby lagged five months behind planned babies at age five, when their vocabulary was tested, and a further three to four months behind those born after IVF.

However experts say the findings are just down to the developmental gap between rich and poor in Britain. The differences in scores “almost entirely disappear” when family background is taken into account, since children born following assisted reproduction tend to have older, better educated and richer parents. [...]

Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at the University of Oxford, said: “This study shows how important it is to take social factors into account when looking at child outcomes. Children from unplanned pregnancies have lower scores on cognitive tests than those from planned pregnancies, but they are also much more likely to come from single parent, low income households. Once this is taken into account, there is no impact of an unplanned pregnancy on children’s development.”

“More education and more contraception” has long been the rally cry of abortion advocates. In turn, they blame pro-lifers for increasing abortion numbers, as most pro-lifers disagree with contraception as a solution to ending abortion. Turns out that’s for good reason.

More than a thousand girls a year aged under 15 have an abortion [in the UK], figures revealed.

Terminations are being carried out on youngsters aged just 12 or 13 who have only just started secondary school. [...]

Norman Wells, director of  the Family Education Trust charity, said: ‘Every abortion involves a personal tragedy for a mother and a child, and none more so than where the mother herself is a child.

‘But these figures are just the tip of the iceberg. For every child who has had an abortion under the age of 16, there will be many more who are engaging in illegal sexual activity and suffering physical and emotional harm as a result.’

Mr Wells pointed to research  showing it was not ignorance of contraception that leads to high rates of teenage abortions, and said instead the ‘contraceptive culture’ was to blame.

‘Those who imagine the answer lies in more sex education and more contraceptive schemes are sadly mistaken,’ he said. ‘As a result of the contraceptive culture we have tended to separate sexual activity from childbearing in our minds. There is always the possibility intimacy will result in the creation of a new life – that is not something to be done lightly.’

The Rev Joanna Jepson, who campaigned against terminations for minor deformities, warned abortions were being offered without any concern for the gravity of the procedure. She said: ‘The figures for underage girls suggests we have to have a debate about the kind of society we’re creating that leads to so many abortions on demand.

Women who have had multiple abortions throw bricks into the glass ideology that having an abortion will allow you to have a “better life”. Abortion proponents are awfully fond of the twenty something woman, standing up with her college degree in hand, saying “I don’t regret my abortion.” But this politically marketable image is far from the reality in the majority of abortions.

From the Guttmacher Institute:

• A broad cross section of U.S. women have abortions:
  • 58% of women having abortions are in their 20s;
  • 61% have one or more children;
  • 56% are unmarried and are not cohabiting;
  • 69% are economically disadvantaged;
  • 72% report a religious affiliation.

Looking at these figures, we can assume that the typical abortion that occurs in North America is had by lower income women, most of whom already have born children.

But without making any positive fundamental changes to a woman’s life, what does having one abortion do? If it didn’t change your situation, then it could very well lead to yet another unplanned pregnancy and yet another abortion.

NEARLY a quarter of women under 25 who had an abortion last year in South Yorkshire had already undergone a previous termination, according to latest figures.

A total of 919 abortions were given to under-25s in Sheffield last year – 221 of them, or 24 per cent, to women who had undergone a termination before.

In Rotherham, 91 out of a total 396 abortions, or 23 per cent, were to women under 25 who had undergone one before.

In Barnsley and Doncaster the figure was 27 per cent – 93 out of 345 abortions in Barnsley, and 153 out of 566 in Doncaster.

The South Yorkshire figures mirror the England average of 25 per cent.