Worse Things Than Abortion

Some people feel so strongly about the abortion of unborn infants that they are willing to murder adults in a gesture of protest.

I’ve often wondered why the decent people who are so troubled by the practice of abortion don’t turn their deeply felt love of the unborn to helping the children who were not aborted, but who may have been better off if they had been.

My morning paper today features a story about a couple who adopted a special needs child, knowing that his expected life-expectancy was 12 years or less. The child, born in Hawaii, had been shaken as an infant. The experience left him blinded, permanently brain-damaged, and suffering from seizures and cerebral palsy. He was six when he died.

According to the story, from 1,200 to 1,400 infants are killed or injured every year by being shaken. Twenty-five per cent of shaken babies die from the abuse. Those that survive suffer side-effects of varying degrees.

In addition to shaken babies are the huge numbers of chldren who suffer other types of abuse.

According to the Darkness to Light site,

1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before the age of 18. (96)

1 in 6 boys is sexually abused before the age of 18. (96)

1 in 5 children are solicited sexually while on the internet. (30, 87)

Nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults (including assaults on adults) occur to children ages 17 and under. (76)

An estimated 39 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today.

More than 500,000 children are in the overburdened foster care system.

Thousands of children live in the homes of meth manufacturers, contracting physical disabilities that will plague them all of their lives.  For example,

a husband and father of five children manufactured and stored chemicals associated with the manufacture of methamphetamine in and under his home for years.  As a result, the five children all suffered severe liver damage.

Children exposed to the chemicals used to make meth develop learning disabilities and long-term health problems. Many die as a result of fires and explosions in home meth labs. Many others, whose parents are wholly innocent of criminal activity, end up living in houses or apartments that have been contaminated by meth manufacturing and can still cause harm.

Millions of American children go hungry much of the year.

According to the FRAC (Food Research and Action Center) site,

Of the 49.1 million people living in food insecure households (up from 36.2 million in 2007), 32.4 million are adults (14.4 percent of all adults) and 16.7 million are children (22.5 percent of all children).

17.3 million people lived in households that were considered to have “very low food security,” . . . that means one or more people in the household were hungry over the course of the year because of the inability to afford enough food. This was up from 11.9 million in 2007 and 8.5 million in 2000.

Millions of children lack adequate health care because their parents cannot pay for insurance. According to a story on the ScienceDaily site,

[l]ack of health insurance might have led or contributed to nearly 17,000 deaths among hospitalized children in the United States in the span of less than two decades, according to research led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Of the thousands of children in the criminal justice system, “as many as 65 to 75 percent of juvenile offenders have one or more psychiatric disorders.”

I understand that people feel strongly that abortion for any reason is unacceptable. Women who feel this way should not have abortions.

All others who claim to oppose abortion because of a love of children, would do well to direct their efforts to the rescue of the suffering children already living in their midst.

Abortion is not the worst thing that can happen to a child.

Darkness to Light (child abuse)

Institute for Intergovernmental Research (The Methamphetamine Problem)

Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)

ScienceDaily (lack of insurance)