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Religion B.A. '04

unread,
May 13, 2005, 2:02:50 PM5/13/05
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First, let me say that I started this Google group for the purpose as
listed on the site:

"A place to dialogue and organize for those opposed to George W. Bush
commandeering Calvin's 2005 Commencement"

Msytsma, who does not fall in this category, is simply taking advantage
of the opportunity to rant. There are three reasons that I have not
blocked him or anyone else from posting on our organizing site.

1) Neither he nor anyone else has been explicitly abusive to other
posters. I applaud everyone, including msytsma, for that.

2) The protest that will occur at Calvin on the day of Commencement is
about exercising the right to free speech. In that spirit, even though
his diatribe is misplaced (there are many, many message boards out
there to discuss policies and politics unrelated to organizing a
protest at Calvin), I have allowed him and anyone else who finds
him/herself on the wrong message board to post here.

3) Progressives need to learn to stand up for their values in the face
of hatred and nationalism. If we cower at the bellicose ranting of
posters like msytsma, how on earth are we going to stand up for
ourselves and for our country in front of thousands of people at
Commencement?

The majority of the posts on this forum have been very respectful of
the Calvin community, often reflecting a deep inner debate among
posters about how to express core convictions while being respectful of
the Calvin graduates.


Now, onto my second topic:

On a recent thread, tcm3crew wrote:
"I know that as a Christian, one of the best uses of my time and money
is to stand against a president who pursues policies that make the rich
richer, the poor poorer, increase the abortion rate, make greed a value
and dismiss truth-telling as a quaint idea."

mystsma wrote in response:

"...do you really believe all those statements you made. Even the most
strident liberal would only say those things in a semi-serious tone
because they know it is primarily inaccurate and mischaracterization.
Now if you could explain yourself, that might actually start a real
discussion."


It is extremely important to note that tcm3crew was right--these are
the very policies that Bush pursues. Here are just a few examples that
have been in the news lately:

"...policies that make the rich richer..." - Bush has led the
Republican Congress to pass a budget that provides $106 BILLION in new
tax cuts for wealthy people who don't need them, all while we are
piling up more and more foreign debt for which every American child,
rich or poor, will be responsible for. Look for yourself:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_spending.

"...the poor poorer..." - This new budget cuts Medicaid funding for
the poor by $10 BILLION, all while more and more Americans are losing
health insurance. Medicaid is a program to provide health care to
America's poor, and it is in a serious funding crisis-just ask your
governor! http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_spending.

"...increase the abortion rate..." - The number of abortions per
year in this country, which decreased during the Clinton years, has
been rising since George W. took office. The Bush Administration is
absolutely not pro-human life, and this can clearly been seen in its
policies. Don't believe me? Look for yourself:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=041013#5.

"...dismiss truth-telling as a quaint idea...' - Can anyone say,
"WMD"? A recently declassified memo obtained by the Sunday Times,
a UK newspaper, demonstrates that although Bush and the
neoconservatives told Americans night after night on our television
sets that they wanted to exhaust every diplomatic option before
invading Iraq (and that really, they didn't want to go to war), they
had already decided that they were going to war and they were fixing
intelligence around it. Don't believe me? Look for yourself--
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201857.html.
Bush has yet to deny this!

Students, Graduates, Alumni, Faculty, Staff and everyone else, the
world needs to know that George W. Bush does not represent American
Christianity, especially not the thinking kind we are/were taught at
Calvin. Stand up for your values!

Raleigh Chadderdon, 2005 Graduate Student

unread,
May 13, 2005, 2:51:58 PM5/13/05
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Thanks Jeremy. I had stopped posting for a while simply because I
couldn't find out how, since the appearance of so many ranters, posting
was worth while, since it always ended up in muddled conversation
accusing/denying/stating/contradicting/blah blah blah. Most all of the
arguments brought up so far, except for those directly related to the
act of protesting, have been simply that: argumants; arguments by
people interested only in arguing. For myself, as someone graduating
but who opted out of the ceremony, I will be pursuing a white-armband,
silent, peaceful protest downtown. I have people who have offerred to
cut 100 white armbands for the occassion to help. I will update again
when I know more about exactly where, when, and how. Thanks again for
posting this as a moderator.


Signed,

Raleigh Chadderdon

smos

unread,
May 14, 2005, 2:01:31 PM5/14/05
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Congratulations Class of 2005. If you are feeling anything like I did
at the end of four years at Calvin you are exhausted and ready to get
the hell out of there. But here you are attending to difficult
questions of faith and protest that you neither anticipated nor chose
for yourselves. I'd be more than a little resentful. Know that you
are supported by many alum, like myself, who are proud to know that
Calvin students and faculty are not simply letting this event happen.
Your conversations, actions and protests are sending a significant
meesage about the embattled defintion of what it means to be a
Christian in our country today. When I left Calvin in 1996 I was very
discouraged about the Christian faith. Your efforts sends a strong
message that Christianity cannot be co-opted by a Republican agenda.
You have changed the way I perceive Calvin and my time there. For the
first time in years I am can say that I am proud of my affilitation
with Calvin College. Thank you and peace to you all.

Sara Moslener

Steve Bakker

unread,
May 16, 2005, 1:47:07 PM5/16/05
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Thanks, moderator, for explicitly getting this board back on track.

Thank you also for allowing people "against us" to post here. It would
have been wrong, I think, to exclude someone like the most prominently
antagonistic and "against us" msytsma, even though he is often openly
disrespectful and insulting. I don't think it's been enough to warrant
"blocking" him, and I agree at least some of your reasons why the group
should as open to new guests as it does. I believe it would be wrong
because it would be willfully neglectful of open disagreements. I have
actually appreciated writing back and forth to msytsma here. I'm
inclined to avoid arguing with people over political or other such
disagreements--it makes me anxious. But this message board, which was
so civil when it started, endeared me to its members, and since his
arrival I've had the luxury of carefully typing my responses to some
things he's said, and learning that arguing isn't as agonizing a thing
as I'd thought it to be.

Your pardon, msytsma, for talking about you like you aren't here. I'm
mainly addressing the guy who started this topic, but it's open for
everyone else to read too, including you, and I really don't understand
forums enough to know if that's a breach in ettiquette. You have
challenged me to think here, and I appreciate that. All I wish is you
wouldn't be so insulting. Though you aren't the only people who have
been insulting here. I don't think people "against" (or annoyed by,
confused by, etc.) this cause OR "for" it should attack people with
insults here or anywhere else. It's impossible for us people to avoid
being condescending and insulting all the time, for sure, but I still
don't like it that us humans do it. I disagree that ALL you've done
here is rant; I think you've said a few valuable things, and I wouldn't
mind if you kept on postin'.

So back to you, religion b.a. '04: take this post as a testimony to
the goodness of not doing away with voices of disagreement in a forum
like this one.

And to Raleigh, welcome back! I'm glad to read from you here again.

And to Sara Moslener, I'm astounded that people's efforts at calvin to
respond critically to the president at the time of his visit as guest
speaker for commencement could change your attitude so much about
Calvin College and encourage you in some way! I'm happy to hear it.
Thanks to you for sharing.

Alan

unread,
May 17, 2005, 9:24:00 PM5/17/05
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Congratulations, class of 2005! Whatever you decide to do to make
known your views about President Bush's visit, you make me almost proud
to say I'm a Calvin grad.

katrinalgasinger

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May 25, 2005, 3:45:50 PM5/25/05
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In response to the "increasing abortion rates," I did look at Dr.
Stassen's article, was concerned, and contacted Right to Life of
Michigan to see what they had to say. Please note their response:

The article you referred to has been in circulation for a bit. Below is
a response from Right to Life of Michigan.

Also, it was recently reported from The Alan Guttmacher Institute that
U.S. abortion rates continued to decline in 2001 and 2002, although the
rate of decline has slowed since the early 1990s. The Institute
estimates that 1,303,000 abortions took place in the United States in
2001­0.8% fewer than the 1,313,000 in 2000. In 2002, the number of
abortions declined again, to 1,293,000, or another 0.8%. The rate of
abortion also declined, from 21.3 procedures per 1,000 women aged
15-44 in 2000 to 21.1 in 2001 and 20.9 in 2002.

I hope this helps.

Pam Sherstad
Right to Life of Michigan


Information from Right to Life of Michigan:


Dr. Stassen attempts to argue that the economic and social policies of
the Bush Administration have resulted in the increase in abortions from
2001 to 2003. Dr. Stassen makes several spurious associations between
social phenomena and abortion (like falling marriage rates), that
render his implications about President Bush's policies inaccurate at
best, and deceptive at worst.

Dr. Stassen is correct in saying that hard economic times do push some
women to choose abortion out of a sense of financial insecurity. The
recession that began in early 2000, with its accompanying job losses,
clearly did impact some women's abortion decision. Our economy took
another huge blow with the 9/11 attacks.

The false correlation that Dr. Stasssen makes is that these events are
the fault of President Bush's policies. They are not! Bush inherited
the recession from the Clinton administration. The President responded
to the recession by stimulating both consumer spending and investment
through tax cuts. He lowered the tax burden on families by raising the
child credit to $1,000 and lowering the bottom tax bracket to 10%. A
greater number of low income Americans pay ZERO federal income taxes
under Bush's policies than before his administration. That bears
repeating... the tax burden on families with children and low income
Americans is lower under President Bush. President Bush and his
policies did not cause the recession or the job losses, so his policies
could not have caused the increase in abortion.

Dr. Stassen also mentions the lack of healthcare as a reason more women
would choose abortion. This claim has no basis in fact. No pregnant
woman in America without employerbased health insurance has to go
through pregnancy without insurance and prenatal care. Any woman with
an income level of up to 200% of the poverty level qualifies for
Medicaid, with full coverage for prenatal care and birth expenses. In
addition, President Bush expanded coverage of the Children's Health
Insurance Plan (CHIP) to cover unborn children. Thus, a pregnant woman
with no insurance can sign up for coverage while she is pregnant and
get care for herself and her child.

Dr. Stassen attempts to correlate decreasing marriage (due to
unemployment) to increasing abortions. He shows that 3 of the 16 states
in his analysis had more marriages and fewer abortions. He conveniently
fails to mention that in at least two states where marriages went down,
abortions also went down. That renders his correlation spurious, as
abortions went down in five states, with marriages going up in three
states and down in two states. Stassens offer no explanation as to why
abortions went down in 5 of 16 states while presumably jobs were lost
in those 5 states. Dr. Stassen also provides no information on why
marriages went up in 3 states if job losses are to blame for fewer
marriages. Did jobs also rise in those 3 states? Or is that an
additional spurious correlation?

The three indicators that Dr. Stassen has choosen are not indicators at
all. One wonders if he was searching for evidence to support a
predetermined conclusion. Furthermore, citing a temporary (cyclical)
rise in abortion as a basis for portraying the President's policies as
fostering abortion is irrelevant to the overarching question of whether
a candidate believes that unborn children deserve the protection of
law. Unborn children are the poorest of the poor. They possess nothing.
All they have to rely on is our commitment as a society to protect them
and give them an opportunity at life. President Bush believes in
protecting the first and fundamental right for the unborn the right to
life without which all other rights are meaningless.

I hope you find this information reassuring, as I did.
I personally applaud President Bush's efforts on behalf of both unborn
AND underpriveleged Americans. We, former recipients of WIC and
government surplus foods, who have benefitted from the increased child
tax credit, and consider ourselves part of "the working poor," have a
hard time understanding where the left gets it's picture of President
Bush not caring about the working man.

Sincerely, katrinalgasinger--Wyoming, MI

JohnC

unread,
May 25, 2005, 5:46:22 PM5/25/05
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katrinalgasinger, thank you for setting the record straight on abortion
and the Bush admininstration.

As usual, the liberals statements amount to "black is white and up is
down". They try to blame Bush, a good Christian who is doing his best
to reduce and eliminate abortions and to create a culture of life, for
any abortions that they promote and allow.

Just think if Gore or Kerry or Hillary were to get in..the result would
be an immediate reversal of the policies of Bush...they would
immediately use tax payer dollars to fund abortions in the US and
around the world...and they would put liberal judges on the bench that
would make the same mistakes...creating new law from the bench, like
Roe v. Wade, instead of letting the legislative and democratic process
work.

Thank God Priscilla Owen got on the bench today, she is a good judge
who will interpret the law and not make new law from the bench. It is
about time she got confirmed.

Thanks again katrinalgasinger and keep up the good work saving the
lives of the unborn from the Democrats and their supporters, NARAL,
Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, National Abortion
Federation, NOW, The Democratic Party, Emily's List, and so on. See
the details and linkages at http://www.discoverthenetwork.org

tcm3...@gmail.com

unread,
May 26, 2005, 9:45:00 AM5/26/05
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There's spin everywhere, and anti-abortion groups use it, too. This
response from the pro-life author concerning anti-abortions groups'
attacks on him shows that it's just not a simple thing. I still haven't
seen a response from the anti-abortion groups on this article. Please
remember that the author of this article is pro-life.

(Reply to anti-abortion groups from Glen Stassen)
More pro-life than thou?: Responding to critics

by Glen Stassen

Randall K. O'Bannon and Laura Hussey are correct that I say "state
abortion data from 2001, 2002, and 2003 show a clear pattern of
increase over figures from 2000 and earlier." And they agree when I
note "correctly, that there were about 1,610,00 abortions in 1990
and...1,313,000 in 2000, representing an overall decline of 17.4% for
the decade. Pretty much on the mark." This is a decrease of about
300,000 abortions per year in the 1990s. The question is whether I am
right that the decisive decline in abortions in the 1990s has reversed
in recent years.

Because my wife and I know from the experience of amazing, gracious
help raising our son David, damaged by the German measles that my wife
had when pregnant, we know that believing you can raise your child, and
getting help in doing so, is hugely important in refusing to have an
abortion. It is because of this firsthand experience that we know
support for prospective mothers is crucial in preventing abortions.
This is no "twist in logic," as they suggest. This is our life
experience. Perhaps they have not raised such a child. Perhaps this is
why they do not understand. My wife also worked as a nurse and teacher
of healthy practices in a high school for pregnant teenagers that
enabled them to bring their babies to school, to get their medical
exams there, to get training in nutrition and healthy mothering there,
so they would not have abortions. And they did not have abortions. They
raised healthy babies. We know support for prospective mothers is
crucial in preventing abortions. This is experiential reality. The data
I analyzed are simply a supplement to what anyone who assists pregnant
women should know intuitively: Support for prospective mothers and
their babies is crucial.

An advantage of citing actual data publicly is that other persons can
check the numbers to see if an error crept in. An honest person admits
errors when they are found in this process and makes corrections.
O'Bannon and Hussey have worked hard to refute what I have shown, and
they are right that I made an error in tallying South Dakota and
Wisconsin. These two states experienced a decrease rather than
increase, totaling 510 abortions. Correcting that error, and narrowing
my study to only the year for which we have consistent data, 2002,
means that the increase in abortions in the 16 states was 6,202. Hence
if the trend in these 16 states holds for the 50 states, the total U.S.
increase in abortions that year was about 20,200. Had the average
annual decrease in the years prior to Bush continued, we would have
instead expected a decrease of 28,000 fewer abortions. Hence about
50,000 more abortions took place in 2002 than expected.

They then raise the possibility that Colorado and Arizona increases may
or may not be caused by better reporting. But there are also two
countervailing possibilities. The very underreporting that they
speculate on is more likely to occur in most states in the most recent
years of 2002 and 2003 because some providers are late in getting their
reports in. This underreporting may be corrected later when they do
report. Hence the actual increase in abortions may be greater than the
numbers I found. Further, in more recent years, quoting them, "RU486,
the abortion pill, which went on the market in late 2000," may have
resulted in abortions that were not reported because they did not take
place in reporting clinics. This, too, probably means the increase in
abortions in later years was greater than the numbers I found. Had I
estimated these possibilities of over-reporting and underreporting,
surely speculation and bias could have crept in. Therefore, I reported
all the data that I could find, as it came from the state health
departments, and did not omit any data one way or the other, in order
to be as objective as I could. Selective reporting according to whether
the data fit one's conclusion would bias the results. For example,
O'Bannon and Hussey confirm my report that Illinois abortions increased
in 2002, but then they report that they found data for Illinois in
2003, in which the number of abortions then decreased. Yet when they
point to Wisconsin's 2002 decrease, they fail to report that in 2003,
abortions in Wisconsin actually increased. Such selectivity looks like
trying to defend against the truth and support a preconceived notion
rather than accepting all the data in a consistent way. I sought to be
objective by counting all the data the health departments reported.

O'Bannon and Hussey seek to give George Bush Sr. the credit for the
decrease in abortions in the 1990s, and to take it away from Bill
Clinton. They say CDC data show that "The decline was strongest in the
first half of the decade, which began with George H.W. Bush in office,
but slowed during Bill Clinton's term." I had not raised this partisan
point, referring only to the 1990s, and not mentioning names of
presidents. They are not only being partisan, they are in fact being
deceptive. According to the CDC Web site, the abortion rate stayed flat
during Bush's years, and declined dramatically during Clinton's years.
During the senior Bush's four years (1989-1992), the abortion rate was
24, 24, 24, and 23. In Clinton's first year (1993) it was still 23. But
by 1994 it had dropped to 21, and by 1997 it had dropped to 17, where
it stayed through 1999. I have sought to be as objective as I can with
the data; truth is a very important commitment for me. I ask whether
this distortion in O'Bannon and Hussey's reporting suggests their focus
is not on what can reduce abortions, but what can defend Bush-senior
and junior.

O'Bannon and Hussey rightly state that I say the data show "if jobs are
lost, abortion increases." But they call this speculation. It is surely
more than that. I cite the following four sets of confirming facts:

1) Two-thirds of women who have abortions say they do not see how they
could afford to raise the child. When unemployment is up, affording to
raise a child is harder.

2) Half of women who have abortions say they do not have a reliable
mate. Data from the Children's Defense Fund clearly indicate that men
without jobs do not usually marry. So increased unemployment in the
last three years predict fewer marriages and fewer reliable mates, and
therefore more abortions. I checked this for the 16 states. Marriages
in fact were down. Only three states had more marriages in 2002 than
2001, and as a group, their abortions actually decreased. Thirteen
states had fewer marriages in 2002, and as a group, their abortions
increased. Nicer confirmation is hard to fine.

3) Black and Latina women tend to be poorer and more unemployed. Their
abortion rates are two to three times higher than white women.

4) The 30-year trend confirms it. Abortion rates move in tandem with
unemployment rates of women over the last 30 years. From 1973 to 1980,
women's unemployment increased from approximately 6% to 7.6%, and the
abortion rate increased from 16 to 29 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 45.
(Of course, these were the first years after Roe v. Wade, which surely
also contributed mightily to the increase in abortions.) But then
abortions did not keep increasing. From 1980 to 1992, unemployment
decreased from 7.6% to 5.5% briefly, and then rose briefly to 7%.
During this period of slow decrease in unemployment, the abortion rate
slowly decreased from 29 to 26. During the Clinton administration,
unemployment dropped nicely to 4.5%, and the abortion rate dropped
significantly to 21. (I am getting my numbers from Minnesota Citizens
Concerned for Life, who clearly explain why their numbers are slightly
higher than the CDC's numbers). During the present administration,
women's unemployment increased above 6%, and the abortion rate appears
to have increased to 22.

O'Bannon and Hussey say I look at only one year for my conclusions. In
fact, as noted above, I have looked at 30 years, but could report only
one part of what I saw in a 700-word article. Looking at only the years
of the Bush presidency, the 10 states for which I have the data in 2000
handy had their abortions increase not only in 2002, but also in 2001.
Their abortions increased by 4,067 in 2001, just about exactly the same
proportion as I reported in 2002. And in 2003, I have data for five
states. Compared with 2000, their number of abortions increased by
5,651. The Z-test of statistical significance is greater than
99.999999% significant.

Furthermore, a Z-test of statistical significance of the 16 states for
the one year that I reported, representing about 30 million women of
child-bearing age, suggests greater than 99.9999% confidence that they
represent the 50 states. In non-technical language, the polls in the
presidential race sample 500 or 1,000 prospective voters and
extrapolate to 50 million voters; I have the actual reported results -
not an opinion poll - for states with 30 million prospective mothers in
them, and am extrapolating to about 100 million prospective mothers in
all the states. This is almost infinitely better than the usual polling
methods.

O'Bannon and Hussey err when they say I signed a statement in 1977
supporting Roe v. Wade. That was a statement on academic freedom. Along
with very large numbers of Christian ethicists, I signed a statement at
the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics supporting
academic freedom for Christian ethicists and moral theologians who take
varieties of positions on these issues, and who were under pressure in
some schools. I do not appreciate the personal attack. Nor do I
appreciate being called an economic determinist, which is hugely
untrue. If economic determinism were true, all poor persons would
abort, and no wealthy person would, which is manifestly untrue.
Authoritarians often seek to use negative, stereotypical, and untrue
labels to exclude people they disagree with from approved humanity. It
is not a practice that fits with supporting the dignity of all
humankind. I ask O'Bannon and Hussey if this is what they were doing by
falsely claiming I am an economic determinist who signed a statement
supporting Roe v. Wade.

I invite O'Bannon and Hussey to come meet our son, who lives in our
home with us, and my wife, who worked for many years in a school for
pregnant teenagers so they could have their babies, stay in school, and
plan a future. It was a huge success, from a pro-life perspective. I
want our whole nation to be a huge success in supporting prospective
mothers, fathers, and their babies. I want us to be pro-life in deed,
not only in word. I am hoping that here we can find common ground. I
respect O'Bannon and Hussey for their very extensive work in checking
the numbers, and for their pro-life commitment, and I sincerely hope we
could work together.

I urge changes in both George Bush's and John Kerry's policies in the
directions I have indicated. Bush does better in words, but his
policies have undermined prospective mothers; Kerry does better in
supporting prospective mothers, but I am pushing him to make a strong
verbal commitment to doing what he can to prevent abortions. Both
changes are possible, if they have the will.

Glen Stassen is the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at
Fuller Theological Seminary, and the co-author of Kingdom Ethics:
Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, Christianity Today's Book of
the Year in theology or ethics.

Stassen's sources and calculations for the increase in abortion rates
that he documented in his initial article:

The decline in abortions from about 1,610,000 to about 1,310,000 during
the 1990s comes from the graph on the Web site of Minnesota Citizens
Concerned for Life. They explain that they get these numbers from The
Guttmacher Institute, which "reports higher numbers than the Center for
Disease Control (CDC) because Guttmacher actively collects the abortion
data directly from providers. The CDC relies on figures gained from
voluntary reporting by abortion providers and relayed from state health
agencies. All numbers reported are voluntary; there are no [federal]
laws requiring abortionists to report to any national agency the
numbers of abortions they perform. Starting in 1998, the CDC stopped
including statistics from four states including California, a state
that accounted for 23 percent of the nation's abortions in 1997." The
maker of the MCCL graph explained in a phone call that the years
2001-2003 in their graph are only projections, not actual numbers.

It was not easy to get the data from the 16 states. The national
sources do not report data beyond 2000. However, I found that the CDC
Web site has links to the data from the Departments of Health for the
50 states. So my friends and I went to many of the state links and
searched for abortions, induced abortions, vital statistics, natality,
etc. Some states such as California, Maryland, Alaska, District of
Columbia, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North
Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia appear not to post the
information where we could find it. (Kentucky's I found by phoning the
state health department, and the responsible person e-mailed the
numbers to me. I had lived in Kentucky for 32 years, knew the Director
of Kentucky Right to Life, who has spoken to my class, and therefore
had special curiosity to find Kentucky's numbers). My sister, Dr.
Kathleen Stassen Berger, found some data on the following Web site:
www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/index.html#us. I found data
for 16 states and reported all the states that I found.

I calculated the percent changes in abortion rates by dividing the
total number of abortions in 2002 (or 2003 for two of the states) by
the total number of abortions for the previous year. I made errors for
two states, which I have now corrected.

I cite the following four sets of confirming facts that unemployment
and lack of health insurance cause an increase in abortions:

1. Two-thirds of women who have abortions say they do not see how they
could afford to raise the child. When unemployment is up, affording to
raise a child is harder.

2. Half of women who have abortions say they do not have a reliable
mate. Data from the Children's Defense Fund clearly indicate that men
without jobs usually do not marry. Therefore, increased unemployment in
the last three years predicts fewer marriages and fewer reliable mates,
and therefore more abortions. I checked this for the 16 states.
Marriages, in fact, were down as predicted. During this time of
increased unemployment, only three of the 16 states had more marriages
in 2002 than in 2001, and as predicted, abortion rates actually
decreased in those states as a group. In the 16 states overall,
however, there were 16,392 fewer marriages than the year before, and
6,207 more abortions, thus confirming the hypothesis that marriages
decrease when the unemployment rate increases, and where marriages
decrease, abortions increase. Clearer confirmation is hard to find.

3. Black and Latina women tend to be poorer and more unemployed. Their
abortion rates are two to three times higher than rates of white women.

4. The 30-year trend shows abortion rates moving in tandem with women's
unemployment rates. From 1973 to 1980, women's unemployment increased
from approximately 6% to 7.6%, and the abortion rate increased from 16
to 29 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 45. (Of course, these were the first
years after Roe v. Wade, which surely also contributed mightily to the
increase in abortions). But then abortions did not keep increasing.
>From 1980 to 1992, unemployment decreased from 7.6% to 5.5% briefly,
and then partway up briefly to 7%. During this period of slow decrease
in unemployment, the abortion rate slowly decreased from 29 to 26.
During the Clinton administration, unemployment dropped nicely to 4.5%,
and the abortion rate dropped significantly to 21. During the present
administration, women's unemployment increased above 6%, and the
abortion rate has increased.

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