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athenaltenaSantorum blames Social Security's troubles on abortion, to fix it we need more people
...
Bwuh?
I'm sorry, Mr. Santorum, but that makes no sense under any sort of logic. Now the population pyramid he's referring to is a real thing in the wake of the 1950s baby boom, but that would not have changed even if every abortion in the last 50 years had never happened. The proof? The countries where it's most extreme are where abortion is not legal or readily available and the stratification is significantly more extreme. And do you know why those countries have such an extreme pyramid? AIDS, which has killed off over half of the adult working population in some of those countries. You supported an increase in funding for AIDS research in those countries, so you should know that.
In short, there are far more things that go into that besides abortions. Furthermore, the birth rate started dropping significantly ten years before Roe v. Wade, and the birth rate did not significantly decine after it (in fact, it went up even when the rate of abortion was at the all time highest in 1980-1983) so there really is not a correlation.*
You fail social science forever. It took me all of five minutes to find enough data to show that you're full of shit.
* In the interest of full disclosure, there is evidence that abortion has affected one thing: the crime rate. Which is to say that about 20 years after Roe v. Wade there was a significant drop and the rate has never recovered, and the evidence points to it being because the number of people who would have been entering the criminal justice system dropped because they were not being born. This is an uncomfortable thing for sociologists to talk about, but the evidence speaks for itself.
...
Bwuh?
I'm sorry, Mr. Santorum, but that makes no sense under any sort of logic. Now the population pyramid he's referring to is a real thing in the wake of the 1950s baby boom, but that would not have changed even if every abortion in the last 50 years had never happened. The proof? The countries where it's most extreme are where abortion is not legal or readily available and the stratification is significantly more extreme. And do you know why those countries have such an extreme pyramid? AIDS, which has killed off over half of the adult working population in some of those countries. You supported an increase in funding for AIDS research in those countries, so you should know that.
In short, there are far more things that go into that besides abortions. Furthermore, the birth rate started dropping significantly ten years before Roe v. Wade, and the birth rate did not significantly decine after it (in fact, it went up even when the rate of abortion was at the all time highest in 1980-1983) so there really is not a correlation.*
You fail social science forever. It took me all of five minutes to find enough data to show that you're full of shit.
* In the interest of full disclosure, there is evidence that abortion has affected one thing: the crime rate. Which is to say that about 20 years after Roe v. Wade there was a significant drop and the rate has never recovered, and the evidence points to it being because the number of people who would have been entering the criminal justice system dropped because they were not being born. This is an uncomfortable thing for sociologists to talk about, but the evidence speaks for itself.
