The Movement for a Better America

Most people are shocked to learn that there have been 55 million abortions in the United States since abortion was first decriminalized in Colorado in 1967. Even a majority of pro-choice people in a liberal city like New York are shocked and surprised by the numbers.

However, we don't post them to shock anyone. We do so to invite people to think about the implications for the future of the country and for their own future . . . as citizens, family members, taxpayers, and members of the most extraordinary society that has ever graced the face of the earth.

By the end of January, the toll will reach 55 million. At current trends, it is almost as predictable as sunrise and sunset.  Shouldn't that shake us up even more?

Yes, our country has endured traumatic times before. They were almost always over something that involved fundamental principles of law and justice . . . like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Slavery and the Civil War are perhaps the best examples. But World War II and the long Cold War qualify, too. At stake was the survival of the fundamental principles in which we believed.

At the age of 29, Lincoln warned that if America died from anything, it would be failure from within. Years later, he added, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years."

That statement is certainly being tested right now, as it has been by other corrupt administrations in the past. But it is that other element in Lincoln's comment that should unnerve us: that, by killing our own unborn children, we are rapidly losing our claim to virtue and vigilance.

Let's be honest. Even slavery -- as terrible as it was -- pales in comparison to the evil of abortion and to its enormous impact. At its peak, slavery affected the lives of perhaps 3 million blacks. We have already terminated the lives of 6 times that many blacks in four decades of abortion; and 18 times that many unborn children of all races and colors.

Slavery was hardly worse than that.

The loss of lives and of faith can also be seen in our churches today. Just look at all the empty pews and you will see a missing generation -- many lost because they are no longer among us . . . plus many more who have lost faith in a world that values life so little.

Those who justified slavery often did so on economic terms. Without the low cost labor of slaves, the agrarian economy of the South could not survive, they said. Yet, in fact it did. A century and a half later, the South is far more prosperous than it would have ever been if slavery had survived.

No such argument can honestly be made for abortion.

55 million abortions represents 30% of our under-45 generation. If they were still around today, that segment of our economy would be 43% larger -- providing needed impetus for new household formation, housing, education, automobiles, electronics, clothing, agricultural products, healthcare.

Meanwhile, half of them would still be in school -- not competing for jobs, but providing fresh demand for education and other services. In other words, they would be the source of much greater demand for the human resources needed to keep our economy prospering. We'd need millions more teachers, nurses, doctors, dentists, you name it. We're talking about millions of jobs that would have to be filled.

And what are we losing? How many future leaders in government, business, the arts, and religion were in that 55 million? At least two of our recent presidents would have been candidates for abortion if they had been born after Roe v. Wade. But what about the missing scientists, innovators, business people, workers, consumers, taxpayers who would have been born? 55 million of them just aren't there.

And don't forget the missing parents of still another generation! Because this generation has a huge hole in it, the next one will have one, too. It is the inevitable "echo effect" of any negative demographic shift. It goes on and on, and it causes the kind of negative compounding that brings down civilizations. Meanwhile the survivors are having fewer children and having them later.

That's why management maven Peter Drucker called "the collapsing birth rate in the developed world" the most important management challenge of the 21st Century. "In fact," he said, "Japan and all of Southern Europe . . . are drifting toward national suicide by the end of the 21st Century."

Is there any wonder why countries like Greece, Spain and Italy are high on the list for bankruptcy today? We're on the verge of it, too. And the fundamental cause is not just taxes and spending, but demographics, compounded by mistaken policies designed to stave off the inevitable consequences of declining populations.

The former Soviet Union was the first to go. Despite its current prosperity, even China won't escape the crisis -- not because its economy is so closely linked to ours, but because their demographic crisis is even worse than ours.

Their younger population is shrinking faster, and their aging population is 5 or 6 times larger. You'll know they've hit the wall when they begin euthanizing the elderly faster than they have been killing the unborn.

That's why we post these numbers. It is to remind us all that there is no way to sustain a growth economy in a society where the demographic pie keeps shrinking the way it has -- decade after decade -- for 50 years.

This is also the source of our conflict with the Muslim world, where the average rate of natural increase is 5 or 6 times what it is for countries in the West. The truth is: If we keep killing our babies, they'll bury us. It is all a matter of time . . . unless we decide to change.

Unfortunately, the worst of the pain from a long term economic crisis will be felt by today's under-45 generation. Our society -- from the President and the Supreme Court on down -- endorsed the idea that our government "had no compelling interest" in whether they lived or died. That made them the most victimized generation in history -- and now we are determined to punish the survivors by handing them the bill for our profligacy. Don't be surprised if they decide not to pay it.

Lincoln was right. We urgently need to get to work restoring our virtue and our vigilance, and ending these extremes of wickedness and folly, or there will literally be hell to pay.