What percentage of people born are worthwhile contributors to society?

Question

I ask questions about abortion and people say it's better for these children to be killed in the womb then to allow them to be born and leech off of society - but I have to wonder - how many of the 48,589,993(1) children killed by abortion would have been useful?

How many (statistically speaking) do you think would have been artists, teachers, scientists, doctors, etc.? That's more people than the population of the entire state of California and Pennsylvania put together(2). That's more people than the entire country of Spain(3).

Here's another interesting statistic - only 7% of abortions are due to rape, incest, fetal abnormalities, or the health of the mother. 93% of abortions are due to simple convenience.(4)

(1)http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.html
(2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population
(3)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population
(4)http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

Answer 1

A large proportion of those aborted would have become criminals. The legalisation of abortion in America is responsible for one of the biggest drops in crime rates ever recorded. The drop started around a year after legalisation and bottomed out around 16 years alter.

I don't like the evidence any more than anyone else does but I've examined the data and sorted out the difference between the correlations and the causatives. There is little doubt.

What is undeniable is that those that were aborted were not wanted. Very few people flourish in an environment where they are not wanted or appreciated. It is therefore highly unlikely that any of these would have had the self-respect and self-determination required in order to be 'worthwhile contributors' to society.

Don't bother trying to use a statistical argument against abortion because the data are stacked up in favour of abortion. Instead, stick with the emotional argument against. That's what I usually do.

Answer 2

Dharma-nator claimed that the year after the "legislation" (I'm sure he's referring to Roe-V-Wade which wiped out abortion laws - rather than legislation, which is what those laws were in the first place) the crime rate began to drop, and continued to do so for 16 years. He attributes this to the "legislation".

Dharma-nator does not understand causal relationships, however. Just because two things happen in close proximity to one another, does not mean one caused the other.

Dharma-nator would have us believe that aborting babies had an immediate impact on the reduction of crimes. Given the context, he can only be insinuating that had those babies been born, they would have been criminals.

Does Dharma-nator honestly expect any of us to believe that babies less than one-year old are out there committing crimes, and that by killing them in the womb we reduced the crime rate. Dharma-nator must be smoking some pretty strong stuff.

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Regarding Causality: You know - when I was only a few days old they circumcised me, and I couldn't walk for a year.

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Regarding people who are not wanted. Again with the unsubstantiated claims. While it is true that some people do not flourish in situations where they are not wanted, Dharma-nator also makes the mistake of assuming that momentary emotion on the part of the mother is permanent. I know many women who considered abortion, but decided that wasn't the option. Technically, for that brief moment the child was "not wanted." Today, however, the mothers are very happy they made the choice they did (and so are the children).

Answer 3

My first thought toward the immediate question is the 80-20 rule which states that twenty percent does the majority of the work.

As for abortion, as an atheist I must say that...Im against it. Life is the only thing we have, so to take it away from anyone is to take away everything. From a practical point of view, we can look at the immerging powers of the world and see that its their population explosion that drives their rise to power.

History has shown this principle to be so, as with Japan and England and early America...the population explosion was the driving force behind the rise to power. Abortion has ended this advantage in America. Why do you think the french have created new laws that encourage people to have more children? This is the reason.

Answer 4

Who is a worthwhile contributor to society and who is not is a pretty subjective judgment. In fact, it could be argued that no one is a worthwhile contributor to society if human society is considered to be worth nothing.

Obviously, human society is worth quite a bit to most of us, but it could very well be worse than worthless from some standpoints.

At any rate, what the aborted fetus would have been like is not really an issue. The issue is that a woman is not a baby machine that society can use to produce population. She is her own person, her body is her own, and no person or society has any right to try and control her reproductive system.

Answer 5

it's too vague a question to have a scientific answer. it depends on what's a worthwhile contributor. even if you define it as those professions specifically, of course there's no way to know.

one study that was done looked at the number of people in prisons before abortion was legalized, and then 18 years after. it found that the prison population went down significantly. that is to say, many of the aborted fetuses would have grown up to be criminals.

Answer 6

Such a sad thing, people are submitting their will to their LUST..... And no body is bothered about "The Lord"s will who said do not even look at the opposite sex with lust ......
After doing this big sin.........
They then go ahead to commit another sin to kill an innocent baby.... who had done nothing wrong.....Who cannot even scream for help....

Do these people believe they are going to go scot free after doing all this?

Dont these people have even the slightest fear of "The Lord", That they are going to stand front of "The Lord" on the day of judgement...............

Howmuch astray man has gone from the straight path......... The path of the believers.........

Answer 7

There be some who by your definitions are worthwhile contributors to society, but at the same time they are destroyers of humanity. It is wonderful to know that in the eyes of God, every human is precious - whether they be counted worthy my society or not. "And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner:"

Answer 8

Lighten up people.

A lot of how a person turns out is "nurture"

Im willing to bet that if all these unwanted fetuses were carried to full term, they would have been brought up in an unstable house, have a drug addicted mother, been abused....any one of these or other horrible ways to be brought up.

Im sure most of them would contrubute to our overcrowded prisons.

BTW- Wikipedia is not an accepted source among professionals.

Answer 9

i gotta say that everyone regardless of class or economic level is a contributor to society. not all are worthwhile contributors, but i like to think that there are far more leaving a positive "footprint" behind them than those who aren't. maybe i'm just in the Christmas spirit though!

Answer 10

What percent of people are useful to society? 100%, even now everyone is affecting the future that will make some other guy do something good.