Does legalized abortion increase or decrease child abuse?

Neil Simpson has created a round-up of links on his blog. All the stories in his round-up are interesting, but this one by Randy Alcorn caught my eye. It’s entitled “The Rise of Child Abuse as a Result of Abortion”. You have to skip down a bit to get to the main point as he first talks for a while about his evil twin.

Here is his thesis:

My belief is that when people believe it’s okay to kill a child before he’s born, because an adult has rights over his life, then inevitably it will become more acceptable to beat him up once he’s born.

And here is his proof:

In 1973, when abortion was first legalized, United States child abuse cases were estimated at 167,000 annu­ally. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 903,000 children were victims of abuse during 2001, a number more than five times greater.

Obviously, this is not counting the 49 million murders of actual children.

Now you might say: “Wintery! Doesn’t abortion decrease child abuse by eliminating unwanted children?”.

Randy says no:

University of Southern California professor Edward Lenoski conducted a landmark study of 674 abused chil­dren. He discovered that 91 percent of the parents admitted they wanted the child they had abused.

“Studies indicate that child abuse is more frequent among mothers who have previously had an abortion.” Dr. Philip Ney’s studies indicate that this is partially due to the guilt and depression caused by abortion, which hinders the mother’s ability to bond with future children. He documents that having an abortion decreases a parent’s natural restraint against feelings of rage toward small children.

The attitude that results in abortion is exactly the same attitude that results in child abuse. Furthermore, if she doesn’t abort, the mother can look at her difficult three­-year-old and think, “I had the right to abort you.” The child owes her everything; she owes the child nothing. This causes resentment of demands requiring parental sacrifice. Even if subconscious, the logic is inescapable: If it was all right to kill the same child before birth, surely it’s all right to slap him around now.

I think we need to realize what is going through the mind of young women: they want to be happy and they are willing to murder innocent children in order to secure their own happiness. They do not see why anyone else’s rights should limit their own pursuit of happiness. After all, it’s survival of the fittest. The majority of single women are pro-abortion. They believe that their own happiness matters more than moral values and moral duties.

Consider how women voted in 2008:

Unmarried women supported Barack Obama by a 70-to-29 percent margin, and they voted for Democratic House candidates by a similar margin — 64-to-29 percent. These margins mean that unmarried women edged out both younger voters and Hispanic voters as the demographic with the strongest support for President-elect Obama. These unmarried women voters joined with younger voters and people of color to create what GQR calls a “new American electorate” — voters with a decided preference for liberal candidates.

Overall, women strongly supported Senator Obama over Senator McCain (56 percent for Obama, 43 percent for McCain). Men split their votes about evenly between the two presidential candidates, with 49 percent for Obama and 48 percent for McCain.

Obama is the most pro-abortion President there has ever been.

In my series of posts on atheism and morality, I explain why moral relativism is the result of atheism. If you want to stop abortion, there are two things to do. 1) You need to start convincing women that God exists, that objective morality is real, and that moral obligations trump the pursuit of selfish happiness. 2) You need to vote to cut off all taxpayer subsidies for pre-marital sex; sex education, contraception, single motherhood and abortion.

3 thoughts on “Does legalized abortion increase or decrease child abuse?”

  1. You are once again citing “research” incorrectly.

    “University of Southern California professor Edward Lenoski conducted a landmark study of 674 abused children. He discovered that 91 percent of the parents admitted they wanted the child they had abused.

    “Studies indicate that child abuse is more frequent among mothers who have previously had an abortion.”

    The statistic cited in the first paragraph may well indeed be from the Lenoski study. But the conclusion about “studies indicating that child abuse is more frequent among mothers who had previously had an abortion” is not.

    It’s a claim appended onto to the Lenoski data as though it was the conclusion. But it’s not Dr. Lenoski’s conclusion, it’s from Dr. Ney. And Dr. Ney doesn’t show research data proving that abortion causes child abuse. What he has is an effect (abuse) correlated to two possible causes: abortion, and early child abuse. But two things being linked in and of themselves from a research standpoint do not prove causality.

    Dr. Ney states that early childhood abuse is a good predictor of becoming a childhood abuser later on. I think most people accept that as true. Being a victim of early childhood abuse is also correlated to some women who have abortions (but not all).

    That does not support a finding of causality. Women who suffer early childhood abuse are also probably likely to have a high rate of substance abuse, domestic violence and divorce. They are probably also more likely to have other disorders common in later life to early abuse victims. If they have also had abortions, that does not make the abortion the cause of the other outcomes. It makes it one of the other outcomes. It does not prove causality.

    I know this would be a good piece of supporting research for the prolife movement to have. But it does not qualify as proof. That proof, by the way, may not at present exist. That does not mean you shouldn’t try and get it to substantiate your argument. But this is not the way to do it.

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