4 ms·

Unpopular opinion, but I'd argue the last ~50 years of legalized abortion, with over 60 million lives lost, also accounts for a large percentage of the missing

Unpopular opinion, but I'd argue the last ~50 years of legalized abortion, with over 60 million lives lost, also accounts for a large percentage of the missing workforce. (Even more so when you consider the loss of their children and their children's children.) > 18% of the workforce has been wiped out by abortion, and this number will climb to 23% by 2035.^1 > While labor force participation may rise in the short run due to mothers choosing to work instead of taking time off to raise kids, unrestricted abortion is likely to decrease labor supply in the long run. Since the Roe decision in 1973 an estimated 63 million abortions have occurred in the United States. If all of these aborted babies had been otherwise carried to term and survived until today, they would add nearly 20 percent to the current U.S. population, and nearly 45 million would be of working age (18 to 64).^2 (1) https://www.hli.org/resources/abortion-affect-united-states/ https://www.hli.org/resources/abortion-affect-united-states/ (pro-life site warning, but it cites sources including the Census Bureau and Planned Parenthood's own research arm, the Guttmacher Institute) (2) https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/b8807501-210c-4554-9d72-31de4e939578/the-economic-cost-of-abortion.pdf https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/b8807501-210c...

dradtke 4y ago
Declining birth rates as a whole are to blame for this, not just abortion. Plus, legalized abortion helped reduce crime rates. https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalized-abortion-on-crime-over-the-last-two-decades/ https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalize...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bojan 4y ago
Out of those 45 million, how many of those unwanted kids would end up getting enough education that they can participate in a modern knowledge economy? And how many would end up needing society's support to make ends meet? Restricted abortion leads to the availability of plentiful cheap, low-level labor, but mostly not the sort of labor that the modern economy really needs.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Those are interesting question, but what are the answers?
jjulius 4y ago
Are you suggesting that abortion be illegal for the sake of maintaining a sizeable workforce?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Literally oppress and remove women's basic bodily autonomy so that Amazon can keep paying people $20/h
nonameiguess 4y ago
Presumably, hormonal birth control, condoms, and allowing women to get educations and have careers has slowed population growth far more than legalizing abortion. That and just becoming a rich country. If we could have stayed more like Niger, we might have 2 billion people by now and wouldn't need immigration at all. I guess that's what sucks about public policy. You have to pursue many goals and some of them may conflict with others.
- kmonsen 4y ago
  Personal liberty and societies needs often conflict. I am happy we mostly choose to favor liberty and I am convinced in the long run this make a better and more productive society. Even if it isn't that is clearly the society I want to live in.
cko 4y ago
> Nearly 45 million would be of working age. And how many of those would be well-adjusted productive members of society?
bibanez 4y ago
I can't see any systems in place for raising 60 million unwanted children. Would you be able to raise any yourself? There's a gap between understanding the numbers and practice.
- odysseus 4y ago
  That's 60 million children missing over almost 50 years, or ~830K/year. But not all of these were "unwanted". Many women are pressured into abortion by abusive, manipulative, cowardly, and responsibility-shirking men. As for the truly unwanted ones, ~33 million couples in the U.S. are infertile. There are untold thousands of families waiting to adopt. A few of them are listed at https://www.americanadoptions.com/family_profile/browse https://www.americanadoptions.com/family_profile/browse As for me, I'm raising several children. My wife and I have considered adopting on top of that. I was adopted. Steve Jobs was adopted. So was John Hancock. Nelson Mandela. Leo Tolstoy. Ray Liotta. Simone Biles. In terms of economic and societal impact, I'd wager somewhere in those 60 million missing children, there were a few hundred kids that could have grown up and made a real positive impact on our lives. We'll never know how many diseases would have been cured by now, or Olympic medals won. Millions of lives. Just gone.
  - tasty_freeze 4y ago
    Most of the sites I found were not primary sources and many were clearly cut & paste jobs to fill some content quota or something. All the same, from what I gathered, it sounds like about 100,000 children are adopted every year, and it is about half of those were due to step-parents adopting the children of their partner. So say about 50,000 adoptions that are foster children or given up at birth. Who is going to adopt the extra 830,000 per year? Maybe those 33 million infertile couples? There are 400,000 kids in foster care right now and apparently those 33M are not jumping at the opportunity to adopt them. Yes, some famous people were adopted. So were some terrible people. I don't see either one being an argument for or against.
  - kmonsen 4y ago
    And women that want to can still go trough with pregnancy and adopt the child out if they want to. It is their right to choose if they want to dedicate 9 months of their lives to giving birth, including sacrificing their body and possibly going through the most painful and dangerous part of the lives. Made even more difficult now as many hospitals in red states are holding back needed medical care just so they don't get accused of supporting abortions. It is certainly not our right to demand this so we can get cheap labor.
devwastaken 4y ago
Population is not synonymous with workforce. Those potential children would have overwhelmingly been low cost labor. Flooding job markets with people is how we have work that doesn't pay what it's worth.
AntiRemoteWork 4y ago
mikem170 4y ago
That assumes that people would not have changed their habits around sex and birth control. I've heard this is what has been happening in states that recently restricted abortion. Also there are illegal abortions, which have always been a thing. Women aren't stupid, they have always had options if they don't want to have kids. Birth rates go down everywhere with more urbanization and education. It doesn't pay to have kids like it used to when we were all farmers.
howinteresting 4y ago
The difference is that bodily autonomy is good, actually. The meta level is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Most arguments are best evaluated at the object level.

dradtke 4y ago

Declining birth rates as a whole are to blame for this, not just abortion. Plus, legalized abortion helped reduce crime rates. https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalized-abortion-on-crime-over-the-last-two-decades/ https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalize...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bojan 4y ago

Out of those 45 million, how many of those unwanted kids would end up getting enough education that they can participate in a modern knowledge economy? And how many would end up needing society's support to make ends meet? Restricted abortion leads to the availability of plentiful cheap, low-level labor, but mostly not the sort of labor that the modern economy really needs.

pyuser583 4y ago
Those are interesting question, but what are the answers?

jjulius 4y ago

Are you suggesting that abortion be illegal for the sake of maintaining a sizeable workforce?

mrguyorama 4y ago
Literally oppress and remove women's basic bodily autonomy so that Amazon can keep paying people $20/h

nonameiguess 4y ago

Presumably, hormonal birth control, condoms, and allowing women to get educations and have careers has slowed population growth far more than legalizing abortion. That and just becoming a rich country. If we could have stayed more like Niger, we might have 2 billion people by now and wouldn't need immigration at all. I guess that's what sucks about public policy. You have to pursue many goals and some of them may conflict with others.

kmonsen 4y ago
Personal liberty and societies needs often conflict. I am happy we mostly choose to favor liberty and I am convinced in the long run this make a better and more productive society. Even if it isn't that is clearly the society I want to live in.

cko 4y ago

> Nearly 45 million would be of working age. And how many of those would be well-adjusted productive members of society?

bibanez 4y ago

I can't see any systems in place for raising 60 million unwanted children. Would you be able to raise any yourself? There's a gap between understanding the numbers and practice.

odysseus 4y ago
That's 60 million children missing over almost 50 years, or ~830K/year. But not all of these were "unwanted". Many women are pressured into abortion by abusive, manipulative, cowardly, and responsibility-shirking men. As for the truly unwanted ones, ~33 million couples in the U.S. are infertile. There are untold thousands of families waiting to adopt. A few of them are listed at https://www.americanadoptions.com/family_profile/browse https://www.americanadoptions.com/family_profile/browse As for me, I'm raising several children. My wife and I have considered adopting on top of that. I was adopted. Steve Jobs was adopted. So was John Hancock. Nelson Mandela. Leo Tolstoy. Ray Liotta. Simone Biles. In terms of economic and societal impact, I'd wager somewhere in those 60 million missing children, there were a few hundred kids that could have grown up and made a real positive impact on our lives. We'll never know how many diseases would have been cured by now, or Olympic medals won. Millions of lives. Just gone.
- tasty_freeze 4y ago
  Most of the sites I found were not primary sources and many were clearly cut & paste jobs to fill some content quota or something. All the same, from what I gathered, it sounds like about 100,000 children are adopted every year, and it is about half of those were due to step-parents adopting the children of their partner. So say about 50,000 adoptions that are foster children or given up at birth. Who is going to adopt the extra 830,000 per year? Maybe those 33 million infertile couples? There are 400,000 kids in foster care right now and apparently those 33M are not jumping at the opportunity to adopt them. Yes, some famous people were adopted. So were some terrible people. I don't see either one being an argument for or against.
- kmonsen 4y ago
  And women that want to can still go trough with pregnancy and adopt the child out if they want to. It is their right to choose if they want to dedicate 9 months of their lives to giving birth, including sacrificing their body and possibly going through the most painful and dangerous part of the lives. Made even more difficult now as many hospitals in red states are holding back needed medical care just so they don't get accused of supporting abortions. It is certainly not our right to demand this so we can get cheap labor.

devwastaken 4y ago

Population is not synonymous with workforce. Those potential children would have overwhelmingly been low cost labor. Flooding job markets with people is how we have work that doesn't pay what it's worth.

AntiRemoteWork 4y ago

mikem170 4y ago

That assumes that people would not have changed their habits around sex and birth control. I've heard this is what has been happening in states that recently restricted abortion. Also there are illegal abortions, which have always been a thing. Women aren't stupid, they have always had options if they don't want to have kids. Birth rates go down everywhere with more urbanization and education. It doesn't pay to have kids like it used to when we were all farmers.

howinteresting 4y ago

The difference is that bodily autonomy is good, actually. The meta level is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Most arguments are best evaluated at the object level.