Okay, today the House of Representatives, in an incredible show of solidarity among the Republican party, voted to outlaw abortions performed after the fifth month. Now, on the surface, many people might think that this is a good idea. After all, at five months a fetus can allegedly feel pain and should therefore be considered a human being and worthy of all rights and privileges thereof.
All well and good. Although, this does bring up the question of cruelty to animals, since they too can feel pain and yet we kill them with wanton abandon. Apparently, feeling pain is only a bad thing if it's a human who is doing the feeling.
But I digress. Back to the abortions. In our country, abortion statistics have been tracked by the Centers for Disease Control since 1969. Those statistics are available on the CDC site for anyone who wants to take the time to look them up. Since they're dealing with numbers coming in from various sources, the final numbers are several years behind. The most complete year is 2009, so those are the numbers I will use in this example.
The total number of abortions performed after 16 weeks (which is the fourth month, not the fifth) were 27,573. That might sound like a lot of abortions but consider that this is 4.9% of the total of abortions performed in this country in that year.
Let's put this in perspective. All states in this country have representation from the people. They have a governor, two senators, a number of congressmen, an upper state house and a lower state house. In 2009, the majority of elected officials in each of the following states were Republicans; Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
So what? Well, in each of these states more abortions were performed than the 4.9% of those performed after 16 weeks. The numbers are:
Florida - 81,918
Georgia - 32,925
North Carolina - 30,596
Ohio - 28,721
Pennsylvania - 37,284
Texas - 77,630
The Republicans in the House of Representatives thought it was so important to lessen the number of abortions in this country that they spent tax payer dollars on a bill that would reduce the total number of abortions by less than 30,000. If they had merely outlawed abortions in Texas they would have had more than twice that number. If they outlawed abortions in Florida, it would be nearly three times that number. If they outlawed abortions in the six states listed above, over half of the abortions in this country would be eliminated!
Republicans - it seems to me if you want to reduce the number of abortions in this country, stop having so many.
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