On July 2, Peter Kasti made the following statement in the Readers Write page of the Alexandria Daily Town Talk: “violent crime dropped…18 years after the legalization of abortion, totally attributable to the non-births of thousands of unwanted children, who then didn’t grow up to be criminals.” I winked at such foolish reasoning, confident that thinking individuals would easily notice the flaws in his logic. On July 8, Kasti repeated his folly claiming that the “removal of unwanted children from society” caused a decrease in violent crime. What he didn’t point out was that those statistics are obviously flawed because they do not take into account the “non-population” resulting from his “non-births”. Kasti wants you to imagine that the world is a better place because all the unwanted children erased by abortion have not dirtied society’s pool. His theory is the exact opposite of the truth.

Since 1973, statistics provided by Planned Parenthood Federation of America—the nation's largest provider and promoter of abortion—indicate that 45 million children in the United States alone have been aborted. That is 45 million lost individuals his 45 million unwanted children could not abuse, rape, or kill because they were never born in the first place: Neither the criminal nor the victim. Statistics must be viewed in context. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, crime has increased dramatically every year in relation to the percentage of the population.  In fact, there has been a 350% increase from 1980 to 2004 on crimes committed per 100,000 of the population.

Kasti’s logic takes us to moral slippery slopes as well. If killing unwanted children lowers the total number of crimes, why not shoot every thief in the head upon conviction. The rate of theft would decrease drastically over the next twenty years. At least the thief was guilty of some crime in the first place, unlike the innocent unborn child who never had a chance to either commit a crime or contribute positively to society. Who is to say the 45 million unwanted children we destroyed would not have helped our society? Perhaps one would have found a cure for cancer. Certainly, 45 million taxpaying citizens would ease the burden we face as the boomers retire and drain Medicare of its resources. What about our elderly? If we executed every adult who reached the age of 72, we would dramatically reduce the incidence of Alzheimer’s, rheumatism, and congestive heart failure in America. But would America really be a better place?

Make no mistake about it: A society that destroys its children by ruthlessly aborting them in their mother’s womb suffers the consequences of such immorality. The calloused logic of Peter Kasti is directly attributed to the continued “non-births” of millions of America’s children. We ignore the truth and substitute “statistics” to ease our consciences. Meanwhile, another million children will be “removed” from our society again this year.