How’s That Again?
From the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control: “Factors that contributed to the increased number of deaths [in the U.S.] in 1987 included population growth and the aging of the U.S. population…” (March 30, 1990, p. 196, emphasis added).
Un-Time-ly Pregnancies?
A recent Time magazine article on birth control, claimed that “…about six million unwanted pregnancies occur in the U.S. each year” (February 26, 1990, p. 44).
Since there are about 4 million live births and some 1.6 million abortions in the U.S. yearly, Time’s figure would mean that every pregnancy in the United States was “unwanted!”
Say it isn’t so, Time. Surely some couple, somewhere in these great United States must have been happy with their “blessed event.”
Starvation
The National Catholic Reporter ran an editorial about ecology which contained a number of dubious statistics, the silliest of which was the assertion that “On a global basis, about 60 million people will starve to death this year” (May 4, 1990, p. 28).
The UN and WHO, both of whom attempt to compile worldwide mortality statistics, agree that “an estimated 50 million deaths occur in the world each year” from ALL causes. (See WHO’s Global Estimates for Health Assessment and Projections — 1990, p. 15).
The Reporter’s starvation claim is thus impossible, and the only starvation evident in this affair is strictly of the intellectual variety.
Let Them Eat Condoms
The U.S. Agency for International Development, popularly know as AID, has proudly boasted that “The Agency provides 75% of all donated contraceptives to the developing world.”
Totaling up the numbers, AID announced that “Since 1968, U.S. AID has purchased (what happened to donated?) $567.7 million worth of contraceptives for distribution to 75 countries — 6.9 billion condoms, 1.6 billion cycles of oral contraceptives, 49.7 million intrauterine devices (IUDs), and 16.5 million vaginal foaming tablets” (U.S.AID Highlights, Vol. 6, No. 4, Fall 1989, p. 2).
These devices and materials were distributed to some of Earth’s poorest inhabitants–people lacking clean water, sanitation and housing, or adequate medical care and diet. What’s that old biblical verse about “handing a stone to someone asking for a loaf of bread?” (Matt., 7:9).
CNN and Brazilian Abortion Deaths
On June 18, 1989, Ted Turner’s Cable News Network broadcast an hour-long “CNN World Report” on abortion.
In the section on Brazil, a CNN reporter claimed that: “Abortion in Brazil is one of the major causes of death for women. It has been estimated that 6,000,000 illegal abortions are performed in Brazil each year. 400,000 deaths result from these abortions. Half of the abortions performed each year, or 3,000,000, are performed on girls between the ages of 10 and 19. Twenty-one in every 100 of them will die.”
Since die total number of Brazilian women of reproductive age (15 to 44) who die each year from ALL causes, is just some 40,000 (See U.N. Demographic Yearbook, 1988, pp. 346–7 or WHO’s World Health Statistics Annual, 1988, p. 120), the claim of 400,000 deaths from illegal abortions is simply impossible.
The reporter who assembled this segment not only didn’t do his homework, he never learned his math. He should have realized that the claimed death rate of 21 per 100 among the alleged 3 million abortions performed on teenagers, yields a death total (630,000) greater than the 400,000 which supposedly occur from all Brazilian abortions combined!
But Ted Turner’s minions swallowed it and broadcast it around the world.
Save Crocodiles, Let People Starve
On August 27, 1990, ABC TV’s Good Morning America broadcast an interview with photographer/author Peter Beard regarding human and animal populations in East Africa.
Beard was asked about an old remark of his that “the ability to feed people is the most dangerous thing that [those battling African famine] could have come up with.”
Beard replied: “I hated that quote, but here’s what I really meant. More food means more people. That’s a quote from Norman Borlaug, the famous expert on world population. When you have massive starvation like you have in many countries in East Africa…the worst thing that you can do is to prop up the situation with food…that’s a very cruel reality. More food means more people. [The famine fighters] did the worst possible thing… [providing food to those starving]”(!)
But Beard had great compassion for African crocodiles, “Crocodiles are 170 million years old; they represent evolution better than any other creature I can think of. They’re highly intelligent, great sense of smell, hearing, everything you can imagine. They’re resilient, they’re fantastic.”
According to Beard, man, “the most dangerous animal of all, has squeezed, through our own selfish population excesses, crocodiles and all of wildlife into a situation where paramilitary assistance is all we’ve got left for conservation.”
Beard then outlined a program through which the African crocodile could be saved — forget about the humans!
