Abortion: Nature or Nurture?

The Numbers

 Here are some approximate numbers related to human reproduction.

Women

• 1 million - The number of eggs a woman is born with.
• 400,000 - The number of eggs left by the time she reaches puberty.
• 400 - The number of eggs released for ovulation over her lifetime.
• 6 - The average number of eggs that get fertilized.
• 3 - The average number of eggs that become a person.

Nature vs. Women

• 99.9% of unfertilized eggs are discarded or reabsorbed (from the time of puberty).
• 50% of fertilized eggs (embryos) are lost (most before the woman knows she's pregnant).
• 10-20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage.

Men

• Over 500 billion - The number of sperm each man produces in his lifetime.
• 8,700 - Number of ejaculations in his lifetime (Link).
• 80 - 300 million - The number of sperm per ejaculation.
• 6 billion - The approximate number of sperm it takes to make a baby (78 ejaculations).
• 3 - The average number of a man's sperm that become a person.

Nature vs. Man

• 99.99999998% of sperm that are sent on a life-making mission end up dead.

Women vs. Nature

• 360 - The number of eggs not fertilized due to birth control.
• 20% of pregnancies are aborted by the woman's choice (1-3% due to advice from a doctor).

Man vs. Nature

• 99% of sperm are wasted, not making a baby (due to birth control or masturbation)
• Man friendly calculation. Only 8,622 sperm are wasted since only one sperm would is prevented from doing it's job, the rest would have been wasted anyways. That's only 0.0000017% wasted.

Conclusion

• Nature wastes more eggs than women do by a ratio of 1,000-to-1 (I'll admit that this is a lame statistic since so many of these eggs never had a chance).
• Nature aborts more embryos than women do by a ratio of 2.5-to-1.
• Man wastes more sperm than nature by a ratio of 25-to-1
• Calculation: Only 3 sperm are needed to make his 3 babies, so nature wastes 3 x 6 = 18 billion. The rest of his 500 billion sperm, or 500 - 18 = 482 billion, are wasted by the man.

Bonus Material

Other parties that try to have a say in the nature vs nurture battle.

• 1-3% of abortions were recommended by doctors for the woman's health.
• 12 states have total abortion bans.
• Female legislators are significantly underrepresented (~22%) in states with total abortion bans.
• 21 states protect abortion.
• Women make up about 40% of the legislature in states with abortion protection.
• Abortion Opinions
• 8-13% of Americans are against abortion in any circumstance.
• 36% of Americans are against abortion in most circumstances.
• Most opposition to abortion is due to religious beliefs.
• Birth Control Opinions
• 9-11% of Americans are opposed to birth control.
• Most opposition to birth control is due to religious beliefs.
• Wasted sperm is a sin like abortion, according to the Catholic and other conservative Christian churches.
• Bloggers write about abortion when they don't have the expertise (hey, that hurt!).

I'm for Late Term Abortions

Recently Planned Parenthood was in the news for allegedly selling parts of aborted fetuses.  I decided to take the reemergence of this issue as an opportunity to express my views on abortion.

I'm pro-choice and I'm for late term abortions.  Actually, I think that late term abortions should be extended to 18 years.  Let me explain.

If a parent can decide if they don't want their child before they've even met him or her, then they should be allowed to make that decision after they've met the child removing all doubt that they don't want them (I know that's a run on sentence, but if you read it again, you'll get my point).  Some children are just difficult and not very likeable.  They're too much trouble.  Even into their teens.  Especially in their teens.  As long as a parent is legally responsible for the child, they should be able to abort them.

Before you object, consider the practical advantages to these later term abortions.  Parents would now have extra leverage when trying to discipline their children.  Imagine, these scenarios:

"Johnny, get your homework done or else we'll abort you!"

"You know why you don't see Sheila anymore?  It's because his parents aborted her.  That's right.  So eat your vegetables!"

Regarding both parents needing to give consent, I'll leave that to the abortion experts.  That's a controversial subject I just don't feel comfortable addressing since it is so sensitive.

If you think the idea of later term abortions is harsh, we could have a cooling off period before parents could act on it.  For example, if a parent wants to abort their child, they have to count to 10 before they can actually do it.

Just think about it, all these people probably would've been aborted, saving us much grief:

• The person that cut you off on the road or took your parking place.
• Those people that post those annoying "repost this or else" posts.
• Bloggers (or at least anyone who started blogging after I did).
• Greedy hedge fund, derivative trading, Wall Street tycoons (Or at least we could hope so!)

I'm sure there might be some potentially good children that get aborted, but that's a small cost at making the world a better place.  Any way you look at it, I'm just glad I'm over 18.

Time For a New Name

I was surprised that this article didn't point out the interesting name of the "Chair of the Pro Choice Caucus". If I were for abortions, I wouldn't want my name to be "Slaughter".

The chairwoman of the House Pro-Choice Caucus urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to press Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan about her views on abortion rights.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said she was concerned about a memo Kagan wrote during the Clinton administration supporting legislation to ban some partial birth abortions.