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Just how is abortion a ‘sound investment’?

    Once again the Daily Gazette demonstrates its shortsightedness with the Feb. 26 editorial, “Family planning solid investment.” The editor takes as gospel truth the Planned Parenthood/ Guttmacher Institute/Family Planning Advocate’s study that the prevention of pregnancies saves lots of money.
    The false “savings” claimed by the editor could apply as well to a farmer who decides to save by not buying seeds, not plowing his fields, not irrigating, and not weeding. While there are real savings in the short run, the long-term result is a disastrous loss.
    A person born in the United States today contributes $3.5 million to the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] over his lifetime, based on 2007 statistics. With 1.3 million abortions annually, the United States tosses $4.5 trillion into the trash each year. This is hardly a solid investment.
    As long as society keeps contracepting and aborting its future away, we can expect a tragedy in the long run. Yet the Gazette claims that this is good for us. What logic! What stupidity!

    WENDELL NEUGEBAUER
    Ballston Spa

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Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org)
U.S. News' Bonnie Erbe Argues Abortion is a 'Good Decision' in a Recession

By Colleen Raezler
Created 2009-04-02 11:06

Get an abortion.

In her April 1 blog post [1], Bonnie Erbe, contributing editor to U.S. News and World Report and host of PBS' "To the Contrary," gave that advice to pregnant moms who are wondering how to raise a child on a strained budget.

It wasn't a tasteless April Fool's Day joke. She's serious.

Erbe keyed her argument around the situation of an unwed, pregnant mother of three who walked an hour to a medical center to abort her wanted pregnancy after her boyfriend lost his job. This mother was featured in a March 25 Associated Press article about the increased demand for contraception and abortions in these uncertain economic times. She called the mother's choice "a good decision."

In Erbe's world, it is "sad" the woman had to walk to the center because she didn't have the bus fare, "terrible that her boyfriend lost his job," and "heart-wrenching that she fell to tears in the doctor's office." As for the abortion itself, she wrote:

But in the long run, can we not agree that an unwed couple's decision not to bring a fourth child into the world when they are having trouble feeding themselves and three children is no tragedy? It's actually a fact-based, rational decision that in the end benefits the three children they already have and society as well.

...

The decision benefits society in two ways. It allows the couple to focus more time, energy and resources on their three children, giving each child a better life and a better chance of growing up to contribute to society. It also lessens the chance the family will have to rely on scarce public resources (food stamps, TANF) to raise their children.

Considering the source, this shouldn't be shocking. Remember, Erbe is also the person who back in 1995 compared partial-birth abortion to the "production of veal." She stated [2] on the November 3, 1995, PBS "To the Contrary:"

But aren't most medical procedures, when you describe them in detail, pretty disgusting? Isn't, for example, the production of veal, when you describe it in detail, and how people eat meat, when they crunch down on the flesh of living beings, formerly living beings with their teeth. Isn't that pretty gruesome, too?

Erbe failed to mention the other resources, outside of government assistance, available to women who find themselves pregnant and in a precarious financial situation. Crisis pregnancy centers [3] across the nation can provide mothers assistance in the form of baby clothes, diapers and formula for their newborns. Adoption services are also available through a number of organizations such as Bethany Christian Services [4] if a mother decides she cannot parent her child.

But to note that would mean Erbe would have to acknowledge that conservatives do care about life, which she charged they don't in a March 29, 1997, Washington Times column [5]:

The right wing has lied repeatedly in an effort to move public opinion on this issue....Lie No.1: Conservatives care about life. The renowned quipmeister, Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, once said, 'Conservatives' interest in life begins at conception and ends at birth.' Truer words were never spoken. If they did care about taking care of babies and protecting the helpless, they would not be so driven to cut government programs that help the poor, nor so concerned about paying a few dollars less of their own money in taxes.

Caring for a child on an already stretched budget is difficult but it is not as impossible as Erbe makes it out to be. But that's not really what's at issue in Erbe's post. The recession is simply one more way to promote her belief that abortion is nothing but a "choice."

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No way to reconcile differences over abortion

    Re May 18 article, “Obama addresses abortion”: There is no common ground for abortion. There is no circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever that can justify or excuse abortion.
    It is true that there are other evils which occupy our attention — euthanasia, death penalty, war, genocide, hunger, poverty etc. All attacks on human life, all evils are not equal. Abortion is an attack on the most innocent of all human life.
    There are many rhetorically pleasing words that politicians use to mask their actual practice in regard to abortion. Some call it a profound moral issue or use a phrase like “abortion safe, legal, rare.” No matter what the propaganda in the press, some Americans are willing to protect the children in the womb.
Abortions are best approved of in the dark, not in the light of day where full and open debate might turn the public against it.
Infants in the womb should be treated as little human individuals, worthy of respect and the right to live and breathe and continue to grow into young adults.
That is why pro-life citizens cannot reconcile with those favoring abortion. A life is at the heart of the debate. A beating heart. It is a choice! Choose life or choose death: abortion.

JOANNE CLOUGH
Guilderland

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Liberty applies to right to have an abortion, too

    Re May 27 letter, “No common ground for abortion foes or friends”: There is a circumstance, a purpose, and a law that can justify abortion.
    The circumstance: Being a citizen of the United States. The purpose: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
    What is liberty? Dictionaries defi ne it as “freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.”
    And the law? The supreme law of the land: The U.S. Constitution. (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”)
    Human beings in the world deserve to be treated as grown individuals, worthy of respect and the right to live and breathe and continue to grow. This is why citizens who believe in the Constitution — in freedom of religion, in liberty — cannot reconcile with pro-lifers.
    It is irrelevant whether our country was built on Christian principles because it is not what is written into our law. Support for our founding documents, for our immaculate principles, for the love of liberty, are not proclaimed in the dark — it is screamed in the light of day with the highest moral profundity.
    You, as American citizens, are allowed to do and think whatever you want. As another American citizen, I can never deprive you of that. What I want answered is what makes you think you and/or Congress can dictate to others what they should do and think?

    AMELIA VREELAND
    Schenectady

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the repubs push the things like abortion on the young girls since they dont want to give them the help with the bills and that there to so it really is teh repubs who cause the trouble and people know it now

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Liberty also applies to the right to have a life

    In response to the June 15 letter [”Liberty applies to right to have an abortion, too”] from Amelia Vreeland: I find it very peculiar that Ms. Vreeland offers the fact that we as citizens have ... “the right to live and breathe and continue to grow” as part of an argument for abortion. It seems to me that abortion is exactly the opposite of what she just stated! Killing a child before it can live and breathe and grow is what she is proposing!
    Ms. Vreeland bases most of her argument on the Constitution essentially saying that we have certain freedoms as a member of this society that should not be impinged upon. Exactly! All of us, whether we are 80 years old or still growing in our mother’s womb, have a right to those freedoms — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!
    It’s hard to pursue those freedoms when people are trying to kill you before you even had a chance!

    JEREMY KERGEL
    Ballston Lake