There are some subjects, it seems, that we just can’t talk about.
That seems even more pronounced in today’s hyper-politicized climate where the divide between “them” and “us” has grown wider and deeper than any could have imagined. Our two-party system, and the need for the candidates in those parties to “contrast” themselves from the “other guys” has created, over the years, lines between red and blue that are starkly black or white.
If you believe this, you cannot be a Democrat. If you believe that, you cannot be a Republican. No crossover. Period.
This intentional and long-term branding has pushed the parties further apart, each to their own radical edge. It has also pushed the editorial stance of news outlets and entire segments of the population apart.
When we, at The M Network, re-launched our site, we committed ourselves for including a “Free Speech” section in hopes of addressing this. We wanted to provide a forum where we, as a team, could voice opinions and open discussion, not just on the easy subjects, but also on the difficult ones. That’s the background of this article.
Back in February, I started posting some pretty big numbers to my social media accounts. They were just large numbers. No context. No explanation.
Some of the numbers I posted were 101,480 (on Friday, February 9th) and 152,220 (on Thursday, March 1). By Tuesday, April 24th, the number had grown to 289,218.
People following me on social media began to notice.
At 225,570, one person posted, “I have to ask, what’s with the #’s?”
By 234,816, people were actually guessing at what it could mean.
“Fred Flinstone’s SS#,” replied one.
“Grains of sand in a cup of flour,” posted another.
Privately, people began to ask me about the numbers, too.
“Dude, you’re killing me,” my brother called to say to me.
“What is this all about,” a friend from church asked.
Before I get to what the numbers represent, it’s important to understand that by the end of the year, the number will be 926,200.
That number, 926,200 is what got my attention. I had no idea. I don’t think anyone has any idea. It was so much larger than I had expected that it took me aback.
I divided the 926,200 by 365 to find that it equals about 2,537 per day. And that’s when I started posting numbers to my social media accounts. Every day I just add 2,537. By December 31, 2018, the number will be 926,200.
I want to put that number into some sort of perspective for you.
The city of Miami has a population of 453,579.1
The city of Washington D.C. has a population 693, 972.2
The country of Guyana has 781,433 residents.3
Not to state the obvious but 926,200 is more than the entire population of Miami, Washington D.C., or Guyana.
In fact, the number 926,200 is just shy of the total number of students in the New York City Public School System.4
In other words, it’s a really big number. Anything that has an impact on 926,200 people is a big deal.
Back in 2008, there were a total of 861,664 families who lost their homes to foreclosure. That was a national crisis. 5
But it’s not 926,200.
For a moment, contrast the number 37,461with the number 926,200. 37,461 is the number of people that died in automobile accidents in 2016.6
In other words 926,200 is nearly 25 times the number of people who die in car crashes in a given year.
Gun control has been a very hot topic in the news lately, and rightly so. According to statistics gathered by the New York Times, more than 38,000 people die each year because of a gun.722,000 of those deaths by gun are suicides. That’s a ton. 11,000 of all deaths by gun are homicides. That’s way too many.
Not to diminish the gun issue at all, but, loosely stated, based on these numbers, it will take a little more than 84 years to reach 926,200 gun murders. But it will take just 1 year for the numbers I’ve been posting to social media to reach 926,200.
Few would deny that opioid use in America is now at epidemic proportions. According to the CDC, of the 68,632 people who died of a drug overdose in 2016, “nearly two-thirds involved prescription or illicit opioid.”8
According to CDC numbers acquired by the medical journal, Medical News Today, there are 614,348 deaths per year attributed to heart disease.29This makes heart disease the number-one cause of death in America. If you combine heart disease with stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, the total number rises to nearly 800,000.30
Just as a point of reference the same article sates that there are roughly 2,627,000 deaths registered in the U.S. each year. This means that death by heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases represent about 30% of all deaths in the U.S. every year.
The headline of the CDC Foundation article these numbers come from reads, “Heart Disease And Stroke Cost America Nearly $1 Billion A Day In Medical Costs, LostProductivity.”
926,200 is more than 800,000.
But let’s not focus on death and destruction. There have been other big numbers in the news. The rapid increase in plastic surgery in the U.S. has been a hot topic for the past few years.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons proudly reports that, outside of Botox, nothing tops breast augmentation. 300,378 boob-jobs were done in 2017. That number is expected to continue to rise.9
The next most popular procedures are liposuction (246,354)10followed by nose jobs (218,924).11
Some of you, when seeing these numbers, might say that the decision to have plastic surgery is a personal choice, and one that should be respected. Others might look at these numbers and suggest that Americans have self-esteem issues (if not full blown vanity issues). Both sides could be correct, and I’m sure it’s a conversation worth having. Irrespective of which side you fall on, though, the numbers attached to the cosmetic surgery procedures listed above – even when combined – don’t equal 926,200.
Surgery in general, not just plastic surgeries, has also become a hotly debated subject. Every year for about a decade, the rise in surgical procedures has elicited questions about how many of these procedures are really necessary.
A half a million hysterectomies – prompted CNN to report that two-thirds of all hysterectomies are unnecessary.12
A similar number of back surgeries prompted the “To Your Health website” to report that nearly 90% of these surgeries didn’t need to be done.13
But 500,000 is not 926,200. As stated earlier, 500,000 people is only about the size of the population of Miami.
By now, after reading a litany of things that aren’t 926,200, I’m sure you’re ready to know what is 926,200.
Unfortunately, the answer will not be satisfying to any. There will likely be hard feelings, anger, accusations, etc.
I know this, because when we just talk about the number 926,200, we can all agree that it is a big number. When we name it, however, the name alone evokes strong emotions and heated conversations.
When that happens, though, remember: in comparison to all of those other things listed, the one thing we can all agree on is that 926,200 is a really big number. There should not be much debate that anything that affects 926,200 people can’t be considered rare or insignificant.
When we were talking about home foreclosures – it was a national crisis.
When the topic was boob jobs, some said that’s too many. (Others were asking, “where are all these big-boobed women?”)
When we were discussing the sad realities of gun deaths or the opioid crisis — the number was so shocking that people took action.
When we talked about the number of hysterectomies or back surgeries, news organizations dove in with investigations.
When we talked about heart disease, people called for more funding for prevention.
And when we talked about the total number of deaths in America each year, the number 926,200 was, rightly or wrongly, not even part of that conversation.
In fact 926,200 isn’t part of any conversation, not even the thing of which there will be 926,200.
So what is it?
What is 926,200?
926,200 is the estimated number of abortions in the U.S. in a single year.
There aren’t too many people who know that statistic.
Fewer want to talk about it.
Some say that there are too many abortions in the U.S.
Others suggest that there are too few.
The starting point for both arguments, however, should be to answer the simple question, “well, how many of them are there?”
Finding the answer to this question isn’t as easy as you might think. I can tell you exactly how many deaths were registered last year. I can tell you how many nose jobs were performed, how many liposuctions and heart procedures were done. I could go to the CDC website and tell you the percent of people 15-44 years-od that use condoms during intercourse (Because I know you have an uncontrollable desire to know that number – here’s the link https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr105.pdf)
You would think the number of abortions would also be easily accessible from the CDC’s National Centers for Health Statistics.
It’s not.
That’s because reporting on abortions is voluntary. Not all abortions are reported. California, Maryland, and New Hampshire, for example, elect not to report any abortion data.14 These three states represent 14% of the country’s population.
So using numbers that were voluntarily reported, and having no numbers at all from three states, as well as countless providers, the CDC’s carefully worded preamble to the data they provide says “In 2014, 652,639 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas.” 15
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us the door to the Guttmacher Institute. The Annenberg Institute says this about Guttmacher, “It provides the most highly respected statistics on the sexual health of women and men. Its figures on abortion are widely cited by the media as well as by groups on both sides of the political aisle.” 17
Evidently, they are the best source for this data.
A little digging shows that the Guttmacher Institute was once part of Planned Parenthood. According to their website, “The Guttmacher Institute is a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in the United States and globally.”18
So, admittedly, they have an agenda. This, of course, is problematic in and of itself. As the agency that collects and releases the most reliable data on abortion, they also admit that they frame that data in ways that best suits their overall mission.
With regard to those numbers, Guttmacher says: The Guttmacher Institute is a primary source for research and policy analysis on abortion in the United States. In many cases, Guttmacher’s data are more comprehensive than state and federal government sources. The Institute’s work examines the incidence of abortion, access to care and barriers to obtaining services, factors underlying women’s decisions to terminate a pregnancy, characteristics of women who have abortions and the conditions under which women obtain them. Guttmacher also tracks abortion-related legislation and policies at the federal and state level, promoting access to abortion services and making an evidence-based case against restrictions that limit access.19
In essence, they claim to collect data directly from abortion providers. This, they say, makes their data more complete – although that data is still given voluntarily so, obviously, it may or may not be 100% complete. According to their website, this data is then used to promote access to abortion services and make the case against restrictions to abortion.
Imagine a scenario in which the NRA was the collector and disseminator of the most comprehensive data on gun violence.
Their data shows that 926,200 were performed in the United States in 2014 – which was the date of the last full data collection on abortion.16
Once completed they released this data to the public under headlines saying that the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest in decades.21
And that brings us back to the big number posted to social media and the writing of this article.
On Valentines Day, I read an article in the Washington Post that stated of Planned Parenthood, “Its performed abortions are also down, but by less — in the most recent year, the group provided 321,384 abortion procedures compared to 333,964 in the 2011-2012 year.” 32
I thought to myself, “Holy smokes!” 321,384! That’s a lot of abortions.”
I had no idea.
Knowing that Planned Parenthood is not the sole provider of abortions, I realized the number that I was looking at was high, but not complete. So I did some searching and ran across multiple citations of the Guttmacher Institute.
Sometime later, I read a Washington Post article titled,“Abortion Battles Are Heating Up Ahead Of November Midterms.” In it, this quote stood out:
“About 1 in 4 women have an abortion in their lifetime, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organization, recently published in the American Journal of Public Health.”22
1 in 4 women seemed like an astounding number to me. In fact, I was stunned.
In the article, the words, “About 1 in 4 women have an abortion in their lifetime,”were hyperlinked. When I clicked on them, it took me to another Post article with the headline: “US abortion rate fell 25 percent from 2008 to 2014; one in four women have an abortion.”23
“Wait, what?” I remember asking myself. “Look at the wording of that:” Abortion rates fell 25% — 1 in 4 women have an abortion. That seemed incongruent. Can it really be true that, until recently, MORE than 1 in 4 women have had an abortion?
I discovered that I’m not alone in this thinking. According to a 2015 article titled What Americans Think Of Abortion, which ran in Vox, “If you find the one-in-three-women statistic surprising, you’re not alone: when we told participants in our poll this figure, 73 percent of them said it was higher than they expected.”35
The press release the Guttmacher Institute put out regarding this report is titled, “Abortion Is a Common Experience for U.S. Women, Despite Dramatic Declines in Rates”20
Also on their website, in an news release from July 2016,the institute reveals an interesting component of their strategy. According to them, successful campaigns, “including the 1 in 3 Campaign and #ShoutYourAbortion, encourage women to share their stories about abortion in order to destigmatize the procedure and strengthen support for abortion access.”36
The title of this press release was “Efforts Aimed at Repealing the Hyde Amendment Gain Momentum”
Also in July of 2016 the Democratic Party platform added these words for the first time, “We will continue to oppose—and seek to overturn—federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment.”28
The Hyde Amendment bars the use of federal funding to pay for abortions (except in cases of incest or when the mother’s health is at significant risk).
The original Hyde Amendment was passed by the House of Representatives in 1976.
107 Democrats and 92 Republicans voted for the bill.35
Bill Clinton signed a revised version of the Hyde Amendment into law in 1993.
Back in 1996, in a speech given to the Democratic National Committee, Bill Clinton said, “Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.”24 From 1993-2016, those three words were part of the Democratic Party’s position on abortion.
In 2008, candidate Hillary Clinton coopted the same exact phrase to communicate her views. 25 26
Barak Obama took a similar tact when he spoke to Pastor Rick Warren about abortion. 27
But, as we’ve already established, 926,200 is not rare. Not hardly. Not using any math.
And I suppose that’s the point of the big numbers I’ve been posting to social media.
There is a large, well-organized effort to desensitize people as to the magnitude and impact of abortion. The people behind that campaign control both the research and the framing of that research. They are primarily interested in politics and policy.
I just wanted to remind people that 926,200 is way more than most people could have imagined and to challenge people – on both sides of the issue and from every political affiliation – that the goal, no matter how untenable as it is, should be 0.
It’s time to stop talking about how to make abortion more legal or illegal. It’s time to stop re-litigating Roe v. Wade. We need to stop bickering about where, when and under what conditions abortions are available. We need to come back to that position where we all look for ways to make abortion unnecessary.
Pie in the sky? Unreasonable? Unreachable?
You bet. But that’s what goals are about.
According to the best data we have on the subject – data provided to us by an organization dedicated to “promoting access to abortion services” — as of the writing of this article, there will have been 380,550 abortions.
380,550… and counting.
SOURCES
- https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/miamicityflorida,miamidadecountyflorida/PST045216
- https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/DC
- http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/guyana-population/
- http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/data/default.htm
- http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/15/real_estate/millions_in_foreclosure/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/us/gun-death-rates.html
- https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0329-drug-overdose-deaths.html
- https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/News/Statistics/2017/plastic-surgery-statistics-report-2017.pdf
- https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/News/Statistics/2017/plastic-surgery-statistics-report-2017.pdf
- https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/News/Statistics/2017/plastic-surgery-statistics-report-2017.pdf
- http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/03/03/healthmag.hysterectomy/
- http://www.toyourhealth.com/mpacms/tyh/article.php?id=1447
- https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/opinion/better-reporting-for-abortions.html
- https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortion.htm
- https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states
- http://www.annenbergclassroom.org/page/critical-thinking-resources-for-womens-issues
- https://www.guttmacher.org/about
- https://www.guttmacher.org/united-states/abortion
- https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/abortion-common-experience-us-women-despite-dramatic-declines-rates
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-abortion-rate-falls-to-lowest-level-in-decades/
- http://www.notable-quotes.com/c/clinton_bill.html
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/10/19/u-s-abortion-rate-fell-25-percent-from-2008-to-2014-one-in-four-women-have-an-abortion/?utm_term=.fe26d15e12c5
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/abortion-wars-are-heating-up-ahead-of-november-elections/2018/04/19/74c7b4ee-3d8f-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html?utm_term=.7738c29c63ef
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N69e-hmmy14
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJuH70_YsN0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hym1BW7Ep2A
- https://www.democrats.org/party-platform#reproductive-health
- https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php
- https://www.cdcfoundation.org/pr/2015/heart-disease-and-stroke-cost-america-nearly-1-billion-day-medical-costs-lost-productivity
- https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/cardiobuzz/44015
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2018/02/14/the-health-202-planned-parenthood-goes-on-the-offensive/5a831b7330fb041c3c7d7849/?utm_term=.51f3359fd845
- https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/94-1976/h952
- https://www.vox.com/2018/2/2/16965240/abortion-decision-statistics-opinions
- https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2016/efforts-aimed-repealing-hyde-amendment-gain-momentum