How many people wouldn’t be alive today if abortion were illegal?

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stpurl said:
And one cannot as I noted speculate that had any particular event (abortion or otherwise) NOT occurred, then ‘one would not be here’ without allowing for literally billions of 'what-if’s.
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stpurl said:
Above all, how many would be alive today if abortion were illegal is a far greater question, and one we can actually measure,
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These seem to contradict each other.

I agree, there are billions of what-ifs (ie billions of potential people who are not here, including 60 million you quote). Thinking about this more since posting this question, I see there’s no way to speculate what would have been, who would be here today and who would not, given a change of events of the past. I think the most we can say is the population today would be different people.
 
The moral principle is always that a wrong action is not somehow “right” because some good comes out of it later on.

I could point to things I’ve done in my life that most of the world, including nonbelievers, feminists, etc would condemn, from which I eventually managed to end up in a good place. It doesn’t suddenly make it okay what I did. Nor does it mean that I might not have somehow ended up in a good place, maybe even the same good place, without doing the bad action.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
The moral principle is always that a wrong action is not somehow “right” because some good comes out of it later on.
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I think you’re reading too much into my comments. I’m not trying to make any moral arguments here (although I can see how that may seem to be implied). I only recently had this realization, that if a few abortions in my family’s past had not occurred, many of my loved ones would not be here today. I was initially thinking along the lines of a “percentage” of the population but I see now there’s really no way to even attempt to predict this (given all the billions+ of potential people who never came to be)
 
God will make good happen no matter what evil actions we take. It is presumption to say our evil actions were responsible or necessary for good to happen. The good comes from God and He neither needed nor wanted our sin to make it happen. At best He allowed it.

Also, (and forgive my hyperbole, I want to draw these options into sharp contrast) you can look at a beloved child and say it’s a good thing I spit in God’s eye, you owe your existence to evil or you can look at her and say I am so grateful that, though I sinned grievously, God gave me a miracle such as you. Which would you say is the better approach?
 
We can all go down the “If not, what if” path. The truth is, we cannot foretell the alternate future. Life is not like that.

Life continued on in spite of these tragic abortions. Thank God for His forgiveness and mercy.
 
This is the study I’d begin with, however, the premise of the question shows magical thinking.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The effect of pregnancy termination on future reproduction - PubMed

A variety of conditions have been anecdotally ascribed to induced abortion, including subsequent reproductive complications. Since most women obtaining induced abortions are at the beginning of their reproductive life, the effect of induced abortion on subsequent reproduction becomes a very...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
OP, are you trying to JUSTIFY taking the life of an unborn child by claiming that it somehow saves or creates others who wouldn’t have been conceived in the first place?

What makes you think your sisters would have had ONLY the children they aborted and never any others?

No, we don’t get to take one life by claiming we’re thus allowing a currently non-existent person to later be conceived.

I learned sometime ago that my grandmother also had an abortion prior to my mother being born. I have never assumed she wouldn’t exist. It is at least as likely that she would exist AND I would have another aunt or uncle. And honestly, I think her family would have been a happier family had her mother behaved differently.–including not having an abortion.
 
WillPhillips said:
For example, both my sisters now have large, happy families. And both had abortions when they were younger. None of my amazing nieces and nephews would be alive today if not for what happened. People always seem to reference the “unborn”, but what about the “born in their place”? Isn’t there technically billions of ‘potential‘ people who are unborn for whatever reason? So is the “unborn genocide” essentially a substitution of other “born people”?
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You can’t change the past so this doesn’t matter. There are millions of small actions that change what type of person will be conceived so abortion does not deserve any special treatment.
 
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To follow up on what @VanitasVanitatum said, if the husband stubbed his toe on the way to the bed and delayed the proceedings by a few seconds, odds are extremely good that the couple would have a different child. There are a literally uncountable number of things that lead up to a specific child being born. Why should abortion be given the credit?
 
Let’s push this to the absurd.

If WWII had not gone down as it had, I would argue the majority of us would not be here.
 
What religion (if any) are you? Can you answerr that please? As it stands, I need a wall chart to follow your line of thought.

There is a fine line between provocative posts and sea lioning. I hope you are sufficiently nuanced.
 
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