It All Comes Down To Marketing

 With the release of the film "October Baby", many people are asking a new question: How common is abortion survival?

Well, let's make a comparison to something a little more well-known: the lynching of blacks in the United States. 


There are more than 3,500 known cases of whites lynching blacks between 1882 and 1968.

3500 lynchings in nearly a century.
That's an average of 83 deaths a year.

Well, that tells us the raw numbers, but out of what population? After all 83 deaths out of a population of 100 would be a lot worse than 83 out of a population of 100 million. 

So what was the black population between 1882 and 1968? This is rather harder to calculate. Mortality rates in the 1880's are rather worse than those in 1968, and the population skew is also different. However, we can safely say that most people alive in 1882 were not alive in 1968. 

In 1860 it was 4.4 million, by 1960 it was 18.9 million.

Since a smaller population makes the per capita lynching incidence look worse, we will calculate the total population in the way that makes the incidence of lynching look the most horrific: we'll just add the two numbers together, call it 25 million. This choice pretends the black population between 1860 and 1959 was a constant 4.4 million, and in 1960 was 18.9 million, but it makes the per capita rate the worst it can be.

So, let's say 25 million alive during that whole period.

Now, there have been roughly 52 million abortions in the last 50 years.

So, how many abortion survivors are there in the United States each year?  

We don't know for sure, since the United States does not even keep integrated statistics on abortion throughout all 50 states - virtually no one keeps statistics on survivors of abortion. 

The closest we can get is to look at a country with a comparable health system that does keep statistics.   According to the 2005 Confidential Enquiry into Child Health, 50 babies survived abortion in Britain in 2002. In 2002, there were 1,354 abortions performed after 22 weeks in Britain. That means that around 3.7% of children aborted after 22 weeks survived.

The figures for the CEMACH 2007 Perinatal Mortality report, gathered from hospitals in England and Wales during 2005, reveal 16 babies who survived abortion were born after 22 weeks in the womb or later in the pregnancy... in 2006, 2948 abortions were performed at over 20 weeks.  That would put the survival rate at .5 %.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 1.4% of U.S. abortions take place at 21 weeks or later. There are 1.37 million abortions in the United States each year. That means 18,200 abortions after 21 weeks.

If Britain's baby survival percentage (.005 to .037) coincides across the Atlantic, then between 90 and  670 children survive abortion every year in the United States (1.4% of 1.3 million is 18,200 and 3.7% of 18,200 is 673).

Now, there's no reason to think US survival rates are different than UK survival rates.

But, let's be generous and say that our calculated abortion survivor numbers are 5 times higher than it should be, and it's really only between 18 and 135 survivals a year in the United States.

Alright.

So, America experienced 83 lynching deaths per year out of a total population of maybe 25 million versus somewhere between 20 and 135 abortion survivals a year out of a total population of 52 million abortions. If we went to straight per capita, that compares 83 deaths per 25 million vs 10 to 70 alive per 25 million.

Yep - if we drop the abortion survival rate by five in order to present a conservative estimate, the rates of black lynchings versus abortion survivors are essentially identical.
And that's if we are being generous.

If we were being honest, we would admit that there are MORE children surviving abortion each year than there were blacks being lynched each year. 

So why has everyone heard about black lynchings, but no one has heard about abortion survival?

It's all about marketing. 

Mocking Victims

Can you imagine a writer mocking the survivors of rape, claiming such alleged victims simply didn't exist?

Can you imagine an editor approving a story that claimed the lynchings of black men were all entirely fabricated: "The odds that this has happened in the real world approach those of being struck by lightning and eaten by a shark at the same time. With a winning lottery ticket tucked in your swimsuit"?

How about an article that claimed the Holocaust never happened, that the people in the camps all died of disease, that their bodies were burned only to keep the disease from spreading?

Well, Salon very publicly denied a similar reality in Andrew O'Hehir's review of "October Baby."

You could ask for no better twist, in an antiabortion drama, than having an aborted fetus return to life as an adult character (especially a really cute one). But unless you’re going to set the movie in heaven or experiment with complicated alternate-universe theories (which might in themselves raise some theological hackles), that’s tough to pull off. Hence, Hannah and her weird story, which gets weirder the longer you stick with it. Bracketing her absurd back story...

Yes, that's a knee-slapper alright, that whole "abortion survivor" meme, isn't it?

Gianna Jessen is just yucking it up over the cerebral palsy she suffered as a result of her abortion survival. 

Ana Rosa Rodriguez thinks one of the funniest things that ever happened to her was having an abortionist rip her arm right off her body and leave her still alive in her mother's womb, to be born a few hours later.

Sarah Smith undoubtedly often refers to the frequent surgeries she's undergone as a result of her abortion survival as "just weird".

And the permanent brain damage Ximena Renaerts suffered as a consequence of her abortion survival is a well-known laugh riot, frequently portrayed in sitcoms. 

There are a lot more survivors, of course, and a lot more stories, but none of them really make a difference to the point of Salon's article:

I was too amused and distracted by the terrible play in which Hannah is acting when she collapses onstage, leading to the doctor’s office scene, to bother with doing any scientific or medical research. ...  But I can state with some conviction that this is not a highly plausible scenario: Abortions that late in the second trimester are exceedingly rare to begin with, probably less than 1 percent of all abortion procedures. And while we’re given a gruesome description later in the film of what this “failed abortion” involved, no one ever explains how or why it happened. The odds that this has happened in the real world approach those of being struck by lightning and eaten by a shark at the same time. With a winning lottery ticket tucked in your swimsuit.

As O'Hehir himself admits, he didn't do a bit of research. And why should he? He's a liberal, and liberals know all.

But it gets better! Again, as himself admits, even if he had known of these survivors, it would have made no difference. He wasn't upset about the abortion or the survival, rather, he was "creeped out" by the portrayal of the main character's father, who was entirely too "Old Testament" for his taste:

That whole aspect of “October Baby” creeped me out a lot more than the wacky failed-abortion story did, honestly.

Ah, that wacky abortion story! Yes, that's just too funny. You could die laughing. Any decent person can see why O'Hehir would be more concerned about the fact that the main character's father showed continuing concern for his daughter's welfare then our same beloved O'Hehir could ever be about the fact that an abortionist tried and failed to kill a young lady.

I would write more, but I'm wiping the tears from my eyes.

UPDATE:
I thought I would calculate the odds on Paddy O'Hehir's figures.


Hey, let's check Paddy's math!

Let's see... according to the Daily Mail, over 60 children a year are born alive after an attempted abortion.

"Medical advances make it increasingly possible for even those born after just 22 weeks in the womb to survive.... Latest Department of Health figures show that abortion is rising, with 193,700 terminations in 2006, and 2,948 carried out over 20 weeks."

Now, the chances of being struck by lighting are 1 in 280,000, according to the Lightning Safety Bureau. About 550 people are struck by lightning each year.

Only 10-20 people are year are struck while in contact with water, much less while actually in the water swimming. "Ron Holle, a former meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who tracks lightning injuries, estimates that 10 to 20 people in the United States are shocked annually while bathing, using faucets or handling appliances during storms."

That means out of 550 people, only 10-20 were in contact with water.
So the 280,000 odds has to be increased by a factor of at least 20.
That makes the odds of being struck while swimming 1 in 5,600,000.

Your chances of being attacked by a shark is 1 in 11.5 million. 

Your chances of having a winning lotto ticket are between 1 in 18 million and 1 in 180 million depending on the exact game.

So, to calculate the odds of Paddy's scenario, his suggestions (swimming, lightning strike, shark attack and winning ticket) have to be multiplied together. We'll take the lowest odds of each to increase the likelihood.

Paddy's scenario: 1 in 52,900,000,000,000, or 1 in 52 trillion.
The national debt is only around 17 trillion.

What are the actual odds of surviving an abortion?

Well, 16 of the 66 babies in 2008 in the UK were born alive after an abortion attempted at or later than 22 weeks. As Paddy O'Hehir points out, those kinds of abortions are infrequent - only 2948 of them in the UK that year.

But those are the kind that will lead to an adult with disabilities.

Of course, of those born under the 22 week cut-off, half still survived more than an hour, but who cares about living, breathing children, right, Paddy?

So, the ACTUAL likelihood of surviving an abortion after 22 weeks and living to adulthood is something more like .005 or 1 in 200.

Heck, let's be generous and say 1 in 1000.

According to http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/after_12_weeks.html, something less than 2% of abortions in the United States are after 22 weeks.

There's 42 million abortions in the US each year, about 115,000 per day.

So, roughly 115 children a day survive their abortion, and could make it to adulthood if they were only given care.

Yep, Paddy.
115 people per day.
That's how many people you insulted.

But what's the chance a liberal or an Irishman, maybe even an Irishmen who's ex-girlfriend had an abortion, what are the chance that such a drunken sod will mock the woman who killed his own child by mocking the men and women who survive an abortion?

Well, the odds of that are 1:1.


Update:
NYT reports  "a 1985 study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology examined  33,000 suction curettage abortions and found a failure rate of 2.3 per 1,000 at the 12-weeks or earlier".  Let's see, that would be 76 survivals in that 33,000 abortion sample.