The Bitter Fruits of Abortion

Presented to the “State, Life, Family” Conference, Kiev,
Ukraine Brian Clowes, PhD
May 17, 2003




Introduction

Back in the late 1960s in the United States, pro-abortion groups promised us that the rewards would be great if we legalized abortion. A group called NARAL promised us that "Legal abortion will decrease the number of unwanted children, child abuse cases, and possibly subsequent delinquency, drug addiction, and a host of social ills believed to be associated with neglectful parenthood."1

This is how the Devil works: He promises us everything, then betrays us. No wonder he is called "a liar and the father of lies."
A few prophetic people, like Father Paul Marx, the founder of Human Life International, realized that the pro-abortionists were lying. But even Father Marx could not have seen just how bad things would really get after abortion was legalized;

*Several abortionists in the United States specialize in killing unborn babies right up until the moment of birth with a hideous procedure called dilation and extraction, or `partial-birth abortion.' The abortionist delivers the baby feet first, all but the head. Then he uses a special tool to break a hole in the baby's head and sucks the brains out. Most of these babies and their mothers are perfectly healthy, and almost all of the babies would be perfectly normal if they traveled just three more inches down the birth canal.

*Many doctors say that, since abortion is legal right up till the moment of birth, that it should be legal after birth as well. If a mother changes her mind and does not want to have the baby after it is born, these doctors let the child starve to death, or kill it outright. They call this "fourth-trimester abortion" or "a second chance at choice." More than a dozen abortionists have been charged with killing newborn babies. We suspect that thousands each year are simply left to die.

*Hundreds of women have died of so-called "safe and legal" abortion in the United States. Most of these deaths were avoidable, since the worst doctors in the profession seem to become abortionists because they cannot get work anywhere else in the medical field. In one case, abortionist Alicia Hanna Ruiz killed a mother of four, then tried to stuff her dead body in the trunk of her car right in front of two of her children. In another case, abortionist David Benjamin punctured the uterus of a mother of four and then just walked away, allowing her to bleed to death. Both abortionists were convicted of murder.

*More than four out of five abortions in the United States are performed on single women. Abortion has become a fast and easy "eraser of mistakes" for women who have sex before marriage. But they are often victims, as well as their unborn babies, because their boyfriends now expect them to abort if they get pregnant, and get violent with them if they do not. At Human Life International, we have documented more than fifty cases of boyfriends murdering their girlfriends because they would not get abortions. And, since the pregnancy of the girlfriend is usually not reported when newspapers write about these crimes, we can estimate that at least one hundred boyfriends kill their pregnant girlfriends each year because they would not get abortions. In one particularly horrible case, a boyfriend lured his 15-year-old pregnant girlfriend into a forest, killed her by jamming a branch down her throat so hard it tore her tongue out, and then crushed her skull with a 15-kilogram rock.

*Abortion has destroyed millions of marriages and engagements in the United States. I have seen husbands standing around outside abortion clinics with sad looks on their faces. When I ask them why they do not do anything to protect their own child, they just shrug and say "What can I do? Abortion is a woman's right and I can't interfere." Studies have shown that a great majority of marriages and pre-marital friendships break up within two months after an abortion.

*And, of course, the psychological impact on women is huge. It has to be when one commits such a profoundly unnatural act. Any priest can tell you about women confessing their abortions from 10, 20, 30, even fifty years previously. Their dead children will just not let them rest. My mother Pamela died in July 1991. On the last day of her life, she confessed to my wife Kathy that she had had an abortion forty years earlier, in 1951. She felt compelled to tell someone about this event after all those years. Significantly, she never told my brother or I that she had aborted our older brother or sister.

We are all pro-life here. We are aware of the terrible effects abortion has on the family, on the fathers, on other children, and most of all on aborting women themselves.
But we often lose sight of the wider effects of abortion, of contraception and sterilization, and of the Culture of Death itself. This "anti-life mentality" does not only affect individuals and families; it has terrible effects on ethnic groups, on nations, and even on entire continents.

What I am here to talk to you about today is about the more sweeping, large-scale impacts of abortion.

The Demographic Fruits.

Introduction. The most profound impacts of the Culture of Death indirectly affect everyone on earth. But almost nobody thinks about demographics, or the characteristics of a nation's population, because these effects take place so slowly.
The direct cause of abortion is the separation of sex from procreation. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Europe, which has been in the grip of the anti-life mentality since World War I.
There are many demographic impacts caused by the Culture of Death in general and by abortion and contraception in particular. In Europe, these effects are;

• a declining population
• decreasing support ratios
• collapse of the family
• the influx of Islam
• declining economic power

Plunging Populations
Demographers use a very important term called the total fertility rate (TFR), which is the average number of babies each woman has during her lifetime. In order for a developed nation to replace its population, its TFR must be about 2.2.

Not one of Europe's 39 countries is currently replacing its population. Sixteen of the lowest twenty TFRs in the world belong to European nations, and the highest European TFR is Albania's 2.03, still well below replacement. Europe's average TFR is now 1.35, which means that Europe's population is about to plunge.

There are currently eighteen countries in the world whose population is actually declining. Fifteen of these are in Europe. In fact, Europe is the only continent whose total population is now declining. Historically, this has only happened during famine, epidemic or war. This is the first time in the history of the world that an entire continent's population is declining due to people simply not having any more babies, for no more pressing reason than they do not want them any more.

The only European country with laws that fully protect preborn children or allow for only a "life of the mother" exception is tiny Malta, home to just 1/20 of one percent of Europe's population. Even Ireland's strong traditional protection of preborn children is eroding rapidly, with ten thousand Irish women and girls travelling legally into England for abortions every year.

Support Ratios
The nations of Europe are already feeling the profound demographic effects of their longtime anti-life policies. These include rapidly dropping support ratios.

The support ratio is the number of working people (aged 20-64) supporting each retiree (assumed to be 65 years old and older). In the year 2000, the European support ratio was 4.1. In other words, slightly more than four workers were supporting each retiree. This ratio will shrink to about 1.7 by the year 2050, collapsing national social security systems and retirement plans and leading to a huge push for cost-cutting in the health care area. This will obviously also lead to a sustained push for euthanasia. We have already seen this in the Netherlands, the first nation to legalize euthanasia. Keep in mind that the Netherlands is one of the youngest nations in Europe.

Collapsing Families
In Europe, the Culture of Death has successfully undermined its two great enemies: Faith and family. There has been a huge increase in the number of divorces (from 125,000 in 1960 to about 750,000 in 2001); births to unwed mothers (4.5 percent of all births in 1960 to about 25 percent in 2001); unemployment (from five million in 1977 to more than 15 million in 2001); and a huge increase in abortions, from about 250,000 in 1960 to more than a million annually today among the EC12 countries alone.2

Europe and Islam
The United Nations estimates that there will be an influx of about 50 million Muslims by the year 2025, mainly from North Africa. Because they are generally a very religious people, Muslims tend to integrate poorly with secular European society, a situation causing great tension and conflict that will only worsen in the future.3

Muslims, who are generally very pro-life, know that they can conquer the world, if not with the sword, then with patience and with their children. As Atifa Dawat, an Iranian delegate to the July 1985 conference entitled "Forum `85," in Nairobi, Kenya, stated, "The more children we have, the better. When there are enough Muslims in the world, then we will have world victory."4 If `Christians' continue to selfishly abort their children while Muslims continue to have large families, then Islam truly deserves its "world victory."

In Germany, rioting has broken out in response to the incoming flood of foreign workers (gastarbeitern, or "guest workers") who are needed in order to make up for the fifteen million Germans who have been aborted over the past thirty years. As expected, the world media has painted this as a "right-wing backlash," with a "small minority of Nazis" causing nationwide disruption. Common sense reveals the truth: Germany is caught in an impossible situation. It must become an ethnic melting-pot with great speed in order to survive, and almost all Germans, regardless of age, resent the influx of foreigners, which has caused their taxes to more than double since 1980.

European countries that have been victims of permissive abortion for even longer periods than the United States are feeling ethnic impacts right now. In Paris, the largest city in the nation known as the "eldest daughter of the Church," there are now more mosques than there are Catholic churches!
As The Wall Street Journal observes;

Fewer Europeans are practicing Catholics than ever and the size of nominally Christian families in Europe has been shrinking for decades. By contrast, many Muslim immigrants are enthusiastic practitioners of their faith and often have more children than the European average. The Muslim population in Europe has doubled in the last decade, according to United Nations estimates. There are now more Muslims in Italy than Jews or Protestants. The first mosque in Rome opened in 1995 and perhaps 100 have opened on the Italian peninsula since 1989. Islam is now the number two religion in France; Muslims edged out Protestants several years ago. There may be as many as five million practicing French Muslims today, a number roughly equivalent to the number of practicing French Catholics ...5

This state of affairs is a direct result of falling Europe birthrates; the last year "native" Europeans replaced themselves was 1973, and since then, there has been a shortfall of tens of millions of births required to replace the population.6 Until now, massive immigration has made up for the shortage of babies. But now the population of Europe, despite this immigration, is declining for the first time since the Black Death of 1347-1351.

Loss of Economic Power
According to the United Nations definition, there are 39 nations in Europe with a population of greater than 100,000 in the year 2000. The UN has projected the average age of the people in each nation of the world by 2050.
By 2050, fifteen of the twenty oldest nations on earth will be European. Thirty-four of the oldest fifty will be European. By 2050, Europe will be by far the oldest nation on earth. This table shows the average age of people by continent in 2050;

Europe..... 52.3 years
Latin America..... 46.6 years
North America..... 45.1 years
Asia 45.1..... years
Oceania 44.7.... years
Africa 30.7..... years
----------------------------

World 42.5 years

Twelve European nations -- including Ukraine -- will have an average age of more than 50 years. The youngest nation in Europe will be Albania, with an average age of 42 years. By comparison, the average age of Nigerians will be 20 in 2050. Liberians will enjoy an average age of 23, and Somalians will average 22 years of age.

In Ukraine, 40 percent of the people will be aged 60 and over, and only 14 percent will be children under 15, compared with 27 percent children and 10 percent over 60 in Nigeria.
The United Nations has also predicted that 43 nations will actually decline in population by 2050. Two-thirds of these (29) are European nations.

Europe is currently losing about a million people a year, and this trend is accelerating fast. If we use the historically more accurate low variant, the United Nations predicts that the European population will collapse from its current 725 million to 565 million by the year 2050 -- a loss of 22 percent. And this accounts for massive immigration from the South.

The fact that the European population is both aging and getting smaller does not bode well for European economic power in the future. We all know that the future belongs to the young; and this does not just refer to our children, it refers to entire nations and continents as well.

As we have already said, by the year 2050 the European population will be rapidly shrinking. It will be about 565 million. By comparison, the population of the United States will be about 355 million. In 2050, the average European will be 52 years old. The average American will only be 45. With its vast storehouses of technology and natural resources, the United States will be much better positioned to lead the world economy than the European Union. But here is another strange demographic effect: By 2050, more Americans will speak Spanish than English, because English-speaking Americans are dying out and Hispanics are having large families!

But where will the real power be in half a century?
Probably not in North America or in Europe.
In Africa!

This continent has already begun to exploit vast natural resources that may dwarf the combined assets of both the European Union and the United States. And Africa will have the people to capitalize on its natural wealth. By 2050, the population of Africa will have nearly doubled to 1.515 billion. And the average age of Africans will be only 31, fourteen years younger than any other continent.

If African nations can overcome AIDS and official corruption, there will be no stopping Africa from dominating the world's economy and moral values for decades to come. In the United States, we already see this effect with the large numbers of African priests coming to our parishes. Father Boniface Osuji from Nigeria once told me that African priests see the United States as mission territory, since so few people go to church there.

Trying to Stop the Dying Process
At least a dozen European countries have recognized the danger posed by plunging birthrates, and have tried to reverse the process, but with little success. History shows us that once the people of a nation are conditioned to believe they should live for themselves and that children are a burden, it is virtually impossible to persuade them otherwise.

As one example, European population alarmists have been exaggerating the high cost of raising children for decades in their campaign to get people to have smaller children. When the terrible demographic effects of too few babies become obvious, the governments try to reverse the thinking of the people, but with little effect. The people remember only that babies are messy, noisy and expensive.

This is why the La France a besoin des enfants! [France needs babies!] campaign failed.7 And this is why, when the German State of Brandenburg offered to pay its citizens US $650 to have a child, there was not even the slightest change in the birth rate. People were insulted that the government had told them for years that raising a child cost more than $300,000, then turned around and offered them just $650 to have babies. No wonder Wolfgang Jahmer, director of a social welfare program in Schwerin, Germany, said that "We have some fears that the tree of life may be falling."8

Germany's culture is extremely top-heavy with elderly people, and visiting American pro-lifers have noted the common sight of dogs being dressed up in expensive clothes and even being wheeled about in baby carriages!9
The only answer to this situation is for pro-life activists to convert the hearts and minds of the people one by one. This will take as long to do as the population controllers took to destroy the European's love of children. We are talking about a process that will take at least a generation. The conversion of hearts is our greatest mission. If the current generation refuses to have children, and if nothing changes their minds, then we must evangelize their children.

Conclusion

Now that I have thoroughly depressed you, I do not want anyone here to go out and commit suicide. There are too few Europeans as it is.

So now I will give you the good news.
The future belongs to the people who have babies.
Nations -- and now even entire continents -- are dying. Ethnic groups are simply disappearing. But we see signs of hope everywhere in the world today;

*Since the current Pope took office in 1978, there has been a 64 percent increase in the number of seminarians worldwide. And groups like Human Life International and Priests for Life are doing their best to reach these young men with pro-life materials and instruction.

*In the United States, pro-abortion families are dying out because they average only about one child. Pro-life families are flourishing because they average between three and four children each. Public opinion polls show that Americans are becoming more pro-life by about one percent per year. Within the next ten years, you are going to see huge changes in our pro-abortion law, which is one of the worst in the world. We are beginning to destroy pro-abortionism at its roots in the United States, and we think the same will begin to happen in Europe soon. The evil weed of anti-life thinking cannot be killed from the top down; it will die from the roots up. How can the Culture of Death win? It contains the seeds of its own sterile destruction.

*Even in nations that have had abortion for almost a century, the people are recognizing the terrible effects and are rising up against it. In Russia, the young pro-life movement is making strong advances, giving the people a message they have never heard before. And in South Africa, the nation with the world's worst abortion law, pro-lifers are defying the repressive regime and are speaking out in greater and greater numbers.

*Finally, and most importantly, we were made to fight -- to fight for Faith, for life, for family, for country -- to fight for the values that dignify humanity, that care for the least and most helpless among us, that lead to true liberty and freedom. There can be no higher calling. We should be sincerely grateful to God for this matchless opportunity to serve Him! Our Lord told us to "Go forth and make disciples of all nations" [Matthew 28:19], and there is no better way to achieve this than by saving lives and souls in the pro-life movement. And our reward will be great, but only if we fight on until the end: "... and you will be hated by all nations for My Name's sake. And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved" [Matthew 24:9-13].

We have to fight with all our might, but do not worry too much if you lose and lose again. Nothing tempers a soul like the pro-life movement, where we are taught to endure and have faith. If ever you get discouraged, just remember the words of 1 Corinthians 15:58: "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."

Endnotes

1National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), "A Speaker's and Debater's Notebook," 1974, page 11.
2Eurostat. A Social Portrait of Europe. Luxembourg: Eurostat, 1991. The EC12 countries are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.
3R. Clarke. "Population Imbalances: The Consequences." Forum [Council of Europe], 1986, pages 5 to 7.
4Janie Hampton. "Women at United Nations Conference Stage Heated Fight Over Abortion." The Oregonian, July 21, 1985.
5Wall Street Journal editorial, September 25, 2000. See also "News Notes." The Wanderer, October 5, 2000, page 3.
6Calculations and extrapolations based on figures from the Institut National d'Etudes Demographique (INED). "Short Fall in Births Europe." Population, July/September 1983.
7French national ad campaign. Daniela Deane. "Birth Rates Down Across Europe." USA Today, October 15, 1997.
8Stephen Kinzer, New York Times News Service. "German State Pays Bounty for Babies." The Oregonian, November 25, 1994, page A13.
9The author personally observed this phenomenon as early as 1986 during one of his visits to Europe.