Roe’s Multiplier Effect

Kengor_Catholic_Roe at 40_012813

This year’s marking of the 40th anniversary Roe v. Wade included, naturally, much regret over the growing death toll caused by the scourge of abortion. The number is now over 55 million. That’s 55 million abortions of children who never became Americans.

That number, however, doesn’t begin to do justice to the total loss. 40 years of Roe v. Wade now equates to the loss of multiple generations of Americans, thus producing an even worse multiplier effect, one that must be considered in counting up the casualties. Think about it:

A huge number of those 55 million would have gone on to have their own children. Those aborted in 1973, would be 40 years old this year. Some of them would even have grandchildren.

peopleIn fact, just imagine—a conservative estimate—if those 55 million abortions had all been born, and, in turn, had each produced, on average, just one or two or three or four descendants. If that had happened, there would be another 100 to 200 million Americans right now.

To be sure, there are some secular progressives who, believe it or not, don’t think of that loss as a bad thing. They hear those numbers and picture mostly negatives: overpopulation, a drain on the environment, more polluters, a further depletion of precious natural resources, more mouths to redistribute income to, more poverty and deprivation, more kids raised in bad families, and woe upon woe.

But I prefer more optimistic thinking.

Try to picture, try to imagine, the faces and personalities of those missing Americans. Which entertainers or musicians or actors were never born? Which politicians? Which NFL or Major League Baseball or NBA or NHL players? Which Olympians? Which writers and scientists and poets and civil-rights leaders? Which Nobel or Pulitzer winners? Which researcher, perhaps, who might be on the cusp of a cure for AIDS or breast cancer?

Well, those people don’t exist. This is the Death Culture. It kills. Roe v. Wade has had a lethal multiplier effect that literally only God alone can fathom.

For Catholic Exchange and Ave Maria Radio, I’m Paul Kengor.

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Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”

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