A new study has concluded that, while largely ignored by the scientific community, abortion is undoubtedly the most consequential issue determining the socioeconomic and demographic composition of the United States.
The study, conducted by Dr. James Studnicki, professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of North Carolina, and colleagues Sharon J. MacKinnon and John W. Fisher, utilized data from the 2008 national summary of pregnancy outcomes, which indicated that 64.6% of all pregnancies ended in a live birth, while 18.4% ended in abortion.
According to the national report, the overall pregnancy rate for non-Hispanic black women (144.3 per 1000) was 65% higher than the rate for non-Hispanic white women (87.5 per 1000). In addition, black women have an average of more pregnancies in a lifetime (4.3) than white women (2.7).
In 2008, while 69% of white pregnancies resulted in a live birth, only 49% of black pregnancies led to live births. The abortion rate for white women was 12.4%, and the rate for black women was nearly three times higher, at 35.6%. Thus, despite a higher pregnancy rate than whites, black pregnancies are much less likely to result in a live birth, largely because of their dramatically higher abortion rate.
In their study, Studnicki and his colleagues applied race-specific death estimates to the abortions occurring to white and black women in North Carolina in 2008. The resulting number of births lost by abortion was then used to project Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL).
The researchers found that, for non-Hispanic (NH) whites, abortions in 2008 contributed 59% of total years of potential life lost, while, for NH blacks, abortions contributed 76% of the same, leading to the conclusion that “induced abortion is the overwhelmingly predominant contributing cause of preventable potential lives lost in the North Carolina population, and NH blacks are disproportionately affected.”
In an email discussion about his study, Studnicki cited Breitbart News’ February review of the New York City Department of Health report that found more black babies were killed by abortion in the city than were born there in 2012.
“As a public health researcher, I was truly astounded by the results in our paper,” Studnicki said. “Federal officials presumably responsible for racial disparities in health outcomes have greeted my paper with absolute silence.”
Studnicki said Public Health agencies must be informed by sound science, rather than ideology and political correctness, in evaluating priorities and allocating limited resources.
“Nevertheless, as a nation we have allowed induced abortion to be relegated to the ideological ‘shadows’ and thereby hidden from valid and objective science,” he said.
As an example, Studnicki cited the fact that some states, including California and Maryland, still do not report abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Studnicki said his research makes the following points in a completely valid and objective way: Abortion is not contraception, but the termination of a developing life; induced abortions account for more years of potential life lost than all other causes of death combined; and the black abortion rate and rate of years of life lost to abortion is more than three times that of whites.
“Why is a year of life lost to abortion less valuable or worthy than a year of life lost to cancer, heart disease or diabetes?” Studnicki asks. “Remember, this nation routinely spends billions of dollars annually for therapies which may extend the lives of terminally ill patients a few weeks or months.”
“Why is this gigantic racial disparity ignored while others such as diabetes mortality, childhood obesity, and geographical proximity to fresh foods (none of which have a fraction of the mortality consequences of abortion) are constantly in the news and attract vast amounts of programmatic resources?”
“The point is that health professionals consider premature death as an important measure of community health status,” he states.
“The metric most often used to measure premature death is called Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL),” Studnicki explains. “Yet induced abortion was never, before our study, considered as a cause of death for YPLL calculations because it was assumed that you cannot count a potential life without first a live birth.”
Studnicki said that when he and his colleagues applied the YPLL construct to induced abortions as a cause of death, they discovered that abortion accumulates more years of preventable premature death than all other causes of death combined. Secondly, blacks have more than three times the rate of YPLL due to abortions than do whites.
“There is no doubt that abortion is the most consequential issue now determining the socioeconomic and demographic composition of the United States,” said Studnicki, “and it is largely ignored by the scientific community and likely many in black leadership.”
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