LARNED — The nation is fascinated by numbers: sports statistics, political surveys, precipitation chances, disease probabilities, commodity prices, and stock market trends. One number, however, is rarely discussed in America; the number 2,900. Two thousand nine hundred is the number of babies aborted each day in the United States. Nationwide abortion statistics are available both from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute (research arm of Planned Parenthood).
The Sacred Heart Youth Group of Larned, along with fellow parishioners, set up a flag display on the north side Sacred Heart Church through the fourth week in January. The purpose of the 2,900 flags was to create a visual display of this number. Each flag stands for a single baby aborted today.
Multiply 2,900 times 365 days in a year and this total of 150,800 babies a year is astounding, sponsors said. But, one year, every year for the past 47 years totals 50 million aborted children since the legalization through Roe vs. Wade, commented Michele Kelty, one of the Youth Sponsors.
The hope of the Sacred Heart Youth Group is that seeing the display will lead all who pass by to consider the true enormity of abortion in America.
“Even if you believe abortion should be legal, perhaps you can agree that something is terribly wrong when every day thousands of mothers with child feel that they have no hope, no choice and no options except to kill their own child,” Kelty said.
“Consider, that in 2017, approximately 18% of US pregnancies (excluding spontaneous miscarriages) ended in abortion.” (This percentage was arrived at by comparing the number of 2017 births reported by the CDC and the number of abortions reported by the Guttmacher Institute.)
• More than 60 million legal abortions have occurred in the United States since 1973. In contrast, 17 million people were murdered during the Holocaust.
• A 2004 Guttmacher Institute survey lists the following reasons given for having an abortion:
0.5% victim of rape
3% fetal health problems
4% physical health problems
4% would interfere with education or career
7% not mature enough to raise a child
8% don’t want to be a single mother
19% done having children
23% can’t afford a baby
25% not ready for a child
6% other
