Right in the Centre: The connection between truth and consequences

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Published on Friday, April 28, 2017

By Ken Waddell
The Banner

Political and economic commentators in the United States are saying that the U.S. economy is not growing, and will not grow, at the rates it used to grow in the 1950s. They say that the former growth rate was in the four to five per cent range and now it’s just below two per cent range. They say population growth and economic growth are linked. That seems believable. If a community or a country doesn’t have enough people, jobs can’t all be filled, opportunities can’t all be met, resources can’t be developed. When that happens, communities and countries start looking at ways to bring in more people. In times past, governments offered baby bonus cheques. In Canada, that became child allowance and now I guess it’s called child tax credits. In early Quebec, the King of France and the Quebec colony leaders strongly encouraged immigration of women so the men could become husbands and fathers, then the villages could grow in size.

Today, communities and countries, by design or default, whichever, fill available jobs as much or more by immigration as by birthing a new generation. Korea’s population is stagnant and they are bringing in immigrant workers. Some African countries, believe it or not, are bringing in people to take up jobs. With all the unemployed, displaced and refugee people that we are lead to believe are in Africa, that doesn’t make sense.

It seems the United States is short of people to make the economy grow. There is one statistic that the media and the government tend to shy away from. The number of reported abortions in the United States from 1970 to 2013 was 51,888,303. The U.S. 2013 population was reported at 316,400,000.  You can do the math, but if the U.S is short of people, there is one possible reason contributing to the shortage. 

There is another statistic that the government, media and various lobby groups use. They will often quote the leading causes of death among children as being a certain disease or type of accident. They never state the obvious and that is that the leading cause of death among children is abortion. The abortion rate appeared to peak in 1990 at 1.4 million and dropped to 664,000 in 2013. Statistics would appear to show it is continuing to drop.

My wife and I have often discussed this drop and we believe that the development of ultrasounds has shown something to people that was previously denied by many and that is that a conception produces a baby. A baby is a baby, regardless if one believes it is a baby at conception or at 10 weeks or at 30 weeks or whatever.

The only really political statement I will make here is that the pro-choice people seem to forget that abortion is never a choice for the baby. Abortion is only a choice for the mother. That choice is well established in law both in Canada and in the U.S. Considering all the details and problems around that question, I don’t see a legal alternative.

That said, I wish that the so-called pro-choice people and the so-called pro-life people and all the politicians, media, academics and everyone else in between would work towards a solution. That the abortion rate has dropped by over 50 per cent is a very good thing. That it is still as high as it is means society has a lot of reckoning and reconciling to do.

I think that the media is largely to blame for the lack of progress on this issue and many others. There is very little original thought or research done by the media. There is a lazy, pack mentality that pervades much of the media world. Few people in the media bring out any fresh ideas. I truly hope that we, in our papers, bring out fresh ideas that are helpful to our community and our country.