Abortion by the Numbers

In this fourth part of my five-part series-in which I look at abortion through the lens of each of the five books of the Pentateuch-I explore abortion by its sheer numbers, and offer a critique for those who call themselves "pro-choice."

I will never forget the first time I read through the entire Bible.  As I was finishing up Leviticus and heading toward Numbers, my brother Erik-who had read the Bible through for the first time a few years earlier-said, "You’re going to get bored when you get to Numbers."  "Why?" I asked.  "Because that’s all it is, just numbers!" he answered.  Although Erik’s answer wasn’t entirely true-there is more to Numbers than just a sheer record of the number of Israelites-it cannot be denied that the book of Numbers is aptly named.

This essay will be the briefest of the five in this series, because its point is simple.  It takes the theme of numbers broadly and suggests that, were we to do our own census of the unborn, we who consider ourselves "pro-choice" would have much to answer for.  Let me explain: it is estimated that between 1975 and 2005 there were over 44 million abortions in the United States (at least over a million each year, peaking in 1990 at 1.6 million).  I don’t quite know how to imagine those numbers.  44 million aborted births, assuming that translates into about 44 million potential people, equals about one-seventh of the current United States population.  No state has a population greater than 44 million, which equals roughly the combined populations of California (the most-populated state) and Virginia. 

Maybe the cumulative number is too hard to face.  The yearly average of abortions from 1975 to 2005 is about 1.4 million, or roughly the population of Maine.  Or the population of Philadelphia.  Imagine repopulating the City of Brotherly Love every year.  1.4 million people is about twenty-four times the number of United States soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.  Imagine a Memorial twenty-four times as long as the Vietnam Memorial on the mall in Washington, D.C., with a new one of the same length erected the same year for thirty years.  After thirty years, such a memorial would be over 33 miles long.

These are hard, hard numbers to look at and take seriously, but we who are "pro-choice" have a duty to face these numbers.  If we can agree that we want abortion to be "legal, safe and rare," we need to do our part to live up to the third part of that equation.  The fact that the number of abortions has declined for the last several years and is now down to about 1.2 million per year is cold comfort.

I am the first to admit and recognize that there is a wealth of reasons why women have abortions, and as I said in part three most of these reasons have unjust economics at their root.  Nevertheless, for "pro-choice" Christians considering the abortion issue, we must be careful and we must be fair.  And ultimately, we must admit that alongside our calls for economic justice, alongside our insistence for a woman’s right to choose, alongside our defense of this important human right-alongside all of these things, there must be repentance.  Repentance for well over 44 million people that might have lived.  Repentance for not taking the issue of abortion (and its consequences) as seriously as we ought to.

At one point in the book of Numbers, Moses tells the Gadites and Reubenites-who wish to settle in Jazer and Gilead rather than cross the Jordan and occupy the land of Canaan-that if they do not help the Israelites conquer the Canaanites as they have promised, "be sure your sin will find you out" (32:23).  If there has been a sin of the social, political and religious left in terms of abortion, it has been the neglect of the numbers.  It has been our inability to consider fully the morality of stamping out the seeds of life before they have a chance to grow.

I am a "pro-choice" Christian, and I firmly believe my stance on abortion is fully compatible with my Christian faith.  But God help us when we stop to consider-or maybe more appropriately, when we fail to consider-the staggering numbers of abortions in this country.  Be sure, our sin will find us out.

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Next week: The Command to "Choose Life"-Final Thoughts on Abortion