Abortion and the New Sexual Freedom

ABORTION AND THE NEW SEXUAL "FREEDOM" -- DISASTROUS TO WOMEN by Gordon Gibby, MD

Now 22 years into the "freedom" offered by abortion on demand, American society is showing some strains; women and children may be suffering as a result. Abortion is the flagship of the new sexual "freedom" the United States began to experience in the '60s. Abortion gives women the final and complete freedom to experiment sexually without the responsibility of raising a little girl or boy. But some say abortion also gives the male a potent option against being forced to pay for the resulting child -- and may also decrease the value and worth of children in general in a society's eyes. Are women -- and girls -- better off after 22 years of free access to the flagship of sexual freedom -- abortion? What do the statistics gathered by the U.S. government show? Planned Parenthood often cites the numbers of women dying from illegal abortions as a strong argument for legalizing abortion. However, in the last year before Roe v. Wade, 41 women died from illegal abortions1, much less than in pre-penicillin years when complications were difficult to treat.

MORE WOMEN THAN EVER DYING Now, however, after 22 years of abortion advances and the new "freedom," over 2,000 women per year are dying from AIDS.2 (See Table One)

TABLE ONE. Yearly female deaths from AIDS +------------------+-------------------+ | 1982 43 | 1986 943 | | 1983 115 | 1987 1434 | | 1984 266 | 1988 1914 | | 1985 489 | 1989 2176 | +------------------+-------------------+ SOURCE: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1991, Table No. 120, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Deaths, by Selected Characteristics: 1982 to 1989.

This incurable disease--recognized in the early 1980's by medical personnel studying highly promiscuous groups-- is spread by many forms of irresponsibility--including promiscuous sex and intravenous drug abuse. Increased sexual and drug recreation appear to be taking the lives of many, many more women than did illegal abortions. It already appears that women have, in the long run, lost big on this one. Yet it appears the final numbers of women dying as a result of this new "freedom" will be even far larger. According to a February, 1993 CDC report, the number of AIDS cases reported yearly among women of adolescent or adult age had skyrocketed from 6 in 1981 to 6,255 in 1992. Still with no cure in sight, these women have a dismal prognosis. And if that rate of growth of women developing AIDS each year continues, a prodigious number of women are going to die -- from this new "freedom." By 1992, 17,604 U.S. females had died from AIDS.3 We are now a good ten years into national recognition of the dangers of AIDS, with enormous expenditures, social efforts, media attention and activities designed to warn everyone about the risks of AIDS. But in the "new age of sexual freedom," how effective are all these warnings? Supporting the view that promiscuity vastly increased are data from the CDC. Reporting in 1991, the health agency found that teenage sexual activity "has soared in the last two decades" as reported in The Gainesville Sun (Jan. 5. 1991). For 15-year olds, the number having premarital sex was reported to have increased by 5-fold, from 4.6% in 1970, to 25.6% in 1988. The researchers noted that this was in spite of nationwide education on AIDS. By their late teens, 51.5% had premarital sex, double the rate (28.6%) of the 1970 figures. The CDC report found the teens were acquiring other sexually transmitted diseases -- herpes infections were present in 4% of older white teens and 17% of older black teens. The "new freedom" seems to have insulated teens from realizing the deadly danger. Again, women lose.

SELLING DEATH But not only teens acted foolishly. In spite of the national warnings about AIDS, "family planning experts" continued to dispense profitable products that provided no protection against AIDS. Despite a surprisingly percentage of 15-24 year-olds in 1988 choosing abstinence, 29.7% of this age group were--by prescription--using the Pill, which doesn't protect against AIDS.4 (See Table Two) Who thought this up?

TABLE TWO: Percentage breakdown of contraceptive efforts by 15-24 year olds in 1988. +-------------------+------------------+ | Pill 29.7 | Condom 9.5 | | Sterile 3.1 | Abstin. 37.9 | | None 7.8 | Other 12 | +-------------------+------------------+ SOURCE: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1991, Table No. 101. Contraceptive Use by Women, 15-44 Years Old, by Age, Race, Marital Status, and Method of Contraception, 1982 and 1988.

Then NORPLANT came along. Like the PILL, it offers no protection against AIDS. So teens, full of the thrill of sexual fun with much-reduced risks of pregnancy, will have a blast -- risking death from AIDS. You'd think people would recognize the risk of this new drug... Instead, Planned Parenthood was busy teaching their affiliates how to insert this new contraceptive that doesn't protect against AIDS. According to their 1992 Service Report, clinicians in 115 affiliates were trained to implant NORPLANT.5 How will we ever turn back these deadly floodgates?

CAN THERE BE ANY UNWANTED CHILDREN LEFT? Abortions in the United States rapidly increased to the 1.5 million mark yearly -- over 4,400 abortions per day. Funds were established to help pay for abortions, and private groups -- such as Planned Parenthood -- were deeply involved. If any woman didn't want to have her child, for the cost of one month's rent in a tiny apartment she could have an abortion. Abortion was to eliminate the perceived "cost" of raising children. It would free women to pursue their careers, unhindered by occasional pregnancies in their sexual lives. Abortion was the solution. Millions took this "solution." If it were the "unwanted" children who bore the brunt of child abuse, the problem should have been virtually wiped out within 10 years in the United States. Instead, we have watched a horrific expansion of child abuse within our borders. Doubling, tripling; with 991,758 substantiated incidents of abuse in 1992.6 (See Table Three) TABLE THREE: Reported Child Abuse Cases by Year, U.S. +---------------------+---------------------+ | 1976 669,000 | 1982 1,262,000 | | 1977 838,000 | 1983 1,477,000 | | 1978 836,000 | 1984 1,727,000 | | 1979 988,000 | 1985 1,928,000 | | 1980 1,154,000 | 1986 2,086,000 | | 1981 1,225,000 | | +---------------------+---------------------+ SOURCE: U.S. Statistical Abstract 1992, Table No. 301

And it wasn't just mild child abuse -- USA Today in 1992 pointed to a doubling of murders of babies less than 1 year old since 1973.7 According to that newspaper, "The largest increase in the numbers of murders of children under age 15 has been of infants..." In 1990, 264 infants were murdered, according to their reporting from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. USA Today said a 1990 Gannett News Service study showed that 3 children a day die from child abuse -- "but that at least three more a day go undetected because of the lack of autopsies." (These facts are echoed by Jack. C. Westman, psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin, who takes the totalitarian step of calling for licenses before you can have children.8 Will you be considered worthy of having children?) What a price we have paid... With abortion now safe, legal, relatively cheap, and 1.5 million unwanted children removed from our society every year, why were almost one million children abused in 1992 Is there no limit to the irresponsibility of the society we are developing?

BROKEN HOMES, JUVENILES AND POVERTY Perhaps part of the child abuse problem is that the man in the home may well not be the father of the child. Or there may not even be a man in the home -- in this new age of "freedom." By 1987, 46.1% of marriages taking place in America involved a remarriage of at least one partner.9 One quarter of America's children have only one parent at home. Newsweek's senior editor, Joe Klein, stated, "The disaster that has overtaken American families has been quieter, more diffuse, but as the data begin to trickle in, the casualty reports from the sexual revolution-- incontrovertible..." Klein quoted Karl Zinsmeister, scholar of the American Enterprise Institute as confirming that there is a high correlation between disrupted homes and just about every social problem imaginable. More than 80 percent of the adolescents in psychiatric hospitals come from broken families. Approximately three out of four teenage suicides come from households where a parent has been absent. Klein quoted a 1988 study by Douglas A. Smith and G. Roget Jarjoura as showing "the percentage of single-parent households with [teenage] children...is significantly associated with rates of violent crime and burglary."10 The result of the sexual revolution for single parent moms has become poverty. While abortion was to uplift the economics of women, now single mothers and their children represent the largest group of people living below the poverty line.11 Sexual freedom has really helped women, hasn't it? And lest we blame "conservative fiscal policy" for this stinking, deadly mess we have gotten ourselves into, carefully review the comparison of spending on defense with that on pure social spending. Not even including the surging Social Security entitlements (which certainly support many grandmothers forced into raising their grandchildren) it is clear that since 1973, both defense and social spending have been cut, but social spending has done pretty well as compared to defense spending.12 In fact, as percentages of total federal spending, social spending in 1992 (at the end of the Bush era - see Table Four) was up compared to 1973, while defense spending, was down. So the problem hasn't been money. TABLE FOUR: Comparison of social program (not including Social Security) and defense spending as a percentage of total federal spending (U.S.). +---------------------------------------+ | Year %Social %Defense | +---------------------------------------+ | 1973 20.497992 31.208309 | | 1980 23.953417 22.674622 | | 1984 20.034607 26.696492 | | 1988 19.33552 27.285977 | | 1992 24.021549 21.606163 | +---------------------------------------+ SOURCE: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994, Table No 507. Federal Budget Outlays--Defense, Human and Physical Resources, and Net Interest Payments: 1940 to 1994.

The problem, honestly stated, has been the new "freedom." True freedom is the ability to DO what you know you SHOULD DO. That verity has been desecrated in an age of abortion. We are now just beginning to realize the price...

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- REFERENCES 1. _Abortion and Women's Health_, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York, NY, c.1990, p. 27. 2. _Statistical Abstract of the United States_, 1991, Bureau of the Census, Table No. 120, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Deaths, by Selected Characteristics: 1982 to 1989. 3. _Statistical Abstract of the United States_, 1994, Table No. 130, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Deaths, by Selected Characteristics: 1982 to 1992. 4. _Statistical Abstract of the United States_, 1991, Bureau of the Census, Table No. 101. Contraceptive Use by Women, 15-44 Years Old, by Age, Race, Marital Status, and Method of Contraception, 1982 and 1988. 5. _1992 Service Report_, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., page 5. 6. _Statistical Abstract of the United States_, 1994, Bureau of the Census, Table No. 337. Child Abuse and Neglect Cases Reported and Investigated, by State, 1991 and 1992. 7. "Infant murders climbing", _USA Today_, January 24-26 1992. 8. "Licensing parents could curb social woes", Jack. C. Westman, Special to the Chicago Tribune, reprinted in the _Tampa Tribune_, Jan. 3, 1995. 9. _Statistical Abstract of the United States_, 1991, p. 87, Table No. 129. 10. "Whose Values?" by Joe Klein, _Newsweek_, June 8, 1992, pp 19-22. 11. _Statistical Abstract of the United States_, 1991, p. 463, Table No. 747. 12. _Statistical Abstract of the United States_, 1994, Table No 507. Federal Budget Outlays-- Defense, Human and Physical Resources, and Net Interest Payments: 1940 to 1994.

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