"In 2000, 1.31 million abortions took place, down from an estimated 1.36 million in 1996. From 1973 through 2000, more than 39 million legal abortions occurred."

Since 1973, when the United States Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, there have been in excess of forty million abortions performed in the United States.  In the three whole years since this report, another estimated four to six million abortions have occurred.  Because of the possibility of multiples (twins, triplets, etc.), the number of victims is much greater than the 40,000,000 children that we can confirm have been killed.

(Source: Jones RK, Darroch JE and Henshaw SK, Patterns in the socioeconomic characteristics of women obtaining abortions in 2000-2001, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2002, 34(5):226-235, quoted in "Facts in Brief: Induced Abortion," The Allan Guttmacher Institute, http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html.)  

"As Americans, we are led by the power of our conscience and the history of our country to defend and promote the dignity and rights of all people. Each person, however frail or defenseless, has a place and a purpose in this world. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, we celebrate the gift of life and our commitment to building a society of compassion and humanity."

(Source: George W. Bush, "Proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day," The White House, January 16, 2004.)   

The often-lauded Federal welfare reform of the 1990s may well prove a curse to the children affected by it in the new millennium. Indeed, a new study of welfare reform by economists at Michigan State University suggests that reformers took a welfare system that fostered fatherlessness and created a system that enforces motherlessness as well: because welfare-reformers have laid down employment requirements for welfare mothers with infant children, hundreds of thousands of those young children are now spending their days in state-subsidized day care. Lest progressive thinkers acquiesce too insouciantly in government's complete cannibalization of the family, the Michigan State researchers draw attention to an incalculable loss to the children being affected: these children are losing the physiological and emotional benefits of maternal breast-feeding.

As context for their analysis, the Michigan State scholars survey the medical literature identifying "human milk [as] the gold standard for infants' nourishment." This literature clearly establishes that compared to bottle-fed babies, breast-fed infants are remarkably free from "urinary-tract infections, lower and upper respiratory-tract infections, diarrhea, allergic diseases, otitis media, bacterial meningitis, botulism, bacteremia, and necrotizing enterocolitis." Research has shown that "human milk also benefits children's cognitive and educational abilities." Researchers have even amassed evidence that breastfeeding conduces to the well-being of mothers, conferring "a greater sense of self-esteem, bonding with the infant, and success in mothering."

Given "the substantial evidence of the benefits of breast-feeding for children and their mothers," and given recent research indicating that "employment can negatively affect the breast-feeding rate of women with infants," the Michigan State investigators began their study with concern about the possible adverse effects of new work requirements for women receiving welfare. And indeed, when the authors of the new study scrutinize national survey data on breast-feeding against the backdrop of a national welfare rules database, they found just what they expected to find: "work requirements [for welfare mothers] substantially and statistically significantly reduced breast-feeding." More precisely, when they look at breast-feeding rates among women enrolled in the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children (mothers "who are at substantial risk of entering welfare"), the researchers find that "the most stringent laws reduced breast-feeding by 22% relative to imposing no work requirements on new mothers." The researchers' nationwide data "for all mothers, not just those who participated in WIC, imply that if welfare reform had not been adopted, national breast-feeding rates six months after birth would have been 5.5% higher than they were in 2000."

In interpreting their findings, the Michigan State scholars stress that "the costs of the decrease of breast-feeding accrue not only to recipients and their children but also to society as a whole." Because "breast-feeding decreases health care costs," welfare programs that force mothers into employment may well mean "a greater burden will be placed on Medicaid."