Abortions after 32 weeks are a very small share of total abortions-- perhaps 0.5%. Let's say half of those are not due to unsurvivable conditions, so 0.25% of abortions are very late + could have survived if born.
Given ~1 million abortions, that's 2500 such abortions.
There were about 23,000 homicides in the US in 2023.
If that teeny tiny share of abortions covering very late abortions of totally viable kids without lethal health issues were counted, those extremely rare abortions would compose fully 1-in-10 homicides in the United States.
In 2023, there were only 11,000 deaths of all external causes (accidents, homicides, etc) of people under age 18.
Abortions of health viable children make up 18% of all non-natural-causes deaths of children.
Using the CDC's multiple mortality data, these extremely rare late-term abortions...
... are nonetheless the second biggest cause of death among people under 18 (after congenital immaturity)
What I'm hearing from many liberals is, "These abortions of perfectly healthy late-term babies who are absolutely babies with thoughts and pain capability would be HORRIBLE if they happened, but it's a conservative conspiracy theory."
But that's not true!
It IS true that these abortions are an EXTREMELY small share of overall abortions!
But the scale of abortions is so absolutely MASSIVE compared to child mortality that even a teeny tiny sliver of abortions would represent a huge share of child deaths.
Assuming we are agreed that "children at 32+ weeks post-conception without any lethal congenital problems" really are equally persons as "children at 45 weeks post-conception without any lethal congenital problems," the scale of killing of the first group IS INSANELY HIGH.
You may wonder if 50% viability rates for late-term abortions is correct.
Well, there are multiple articles with quotes from abortion doctors who do these procedures saying their patients are about 50-50 severe abnormality vs. discretionary reasons. I take them at their word.
But folks, even if only 20% of late-term abortions are discretionary: it would still be one of the single biggest causes of death for children! Especially when you realize the current #1 is congenital defects so should be dropped out of the baseline of "survivable cases"
What I'm getting at here folks is that it barely matters at all what numbers you choose.
At any even vaguely plausible numbers, late-term abortions of otherwise viable pregnancies are in fact an extremely large killer of children compared to other causes of child death.
You can debate if late-term abortion of viable pregnancies is the #2 killer of American children or #11 or #25 or whatever, but folks we're talking about a top-25 killer from a list that includes 828 causes of child death with at least 10 kids killed in 2023.
In any sane world, we would recognize that late-term abortions are about as likely to kill kids as guns or SIDS or car accidents. And most people think 1 or 2 or 3 of those are worth intervening on to protect child lives, whether through gun control, "back is best," carseats
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The best historical analog for the US is not, in fact, the late Roman Empire.
It is the 18th century Qing Dynasty.
Interesting times may yet be ahead of us.
Society undefeated in war with an incredible reputation containing a massive share of world GDP and a huge leading advantage in technology and population originally ruled by a cadre of highly capable settler-militarist leaders ultimately brought down by the ability of technological upstarts abroad to bleed it of its wealth, hook its people on drugs, and exploit idiotic internal divisions to pick it apart. Plus a bunch of corruption, weird cults of personality, and just weird cults along the way.
I think on a basic level "America is the 18th century Qing Dynasty" is actually China's theory of the matter as well, but they're realizing that they actually are not quite the late 18th century British Empire. They're racing to get there but may not make it, and America is not quite as internally dysfunctional as the latter Qing.
I think it would be great to have the BLM+NFS produce a GIS map that shades out all the lands which are 1) outside the states of eligibility 2) covered under wilderness protection rules, 3) covered under ongoing rights rules, 4) not buildable, 5) excessively remote
But in practice, the reasons against this are: 1) The point of the nomination-and-consultation process is to leave discretion to states and localities! That's literally the point! DC deciding which lands are right for disposal would defeat the point of the policy! 2) Rule changes for federal lands are implemented routinely via statute, federal land sales do already occur (public purpose rules, etc), changes in land statuses do occur (upgrades of NPS lands, etc), and AFAIK none of these have ever been paired with an expectation that a Senator's office should hire an ArcGIS team to work up an interactive parcel-level map of half of the land area of the United States
It's actually plenty to just have the statute say what the rules are!
"Point at the map exactly what's for sale."
Nothing. Literally nothing. This law establishes zero acres for sale.
It mandates the BLM and NFS to find acreage which fits the rules stipulated.
Now, a totally fair critique is: "What if they can't find enough acreage to fit the rules stipulated?"
And I think that's definitely a weak point in the drafting! I hope they fix it in conference!
In practice I don't think it will be an issue.
Now, I am sure that as soon as BLM/NFS do nominate lands for sale, some enterprising ArcGIS wizard will work up a map, and doubtless there will be some bird or lizard or something on some of the land for people to get angry about. And that's fine! Then you can lobby your state/local government to push back!
The thing about the conservatives opposed to selling Federal lands (e.g. I noticed @L0m3z ), is that they clearly have not actually read @BasedMikeLee 's actual bill. Massive failure of literacy on the part of the based right.
So let's look at the bill!
First, what kind of land can be sold?
This turns out to be complicated. The answer is basically Bureau of Land Management Land or Forest Service Land (with exceptions). So what kind of land CANNOT be sold?
There's a few more items cut off here but you get the idea. If land has ANY kind of ecological or recreational protected status, it remains totally protected.
In the ensuing 5 years, I'm not sure 100% of the article is correct. The scale of historic under-reporting of police-related homicides was probably larger than I allowed for here.
But the basic thesis that police violence is escalating holds up in more recent data.
Here are CDC estimates of "deaths of legal intervention" exclusive of executions. These should overwhelmingly be deaths involving police officers, though I think they might include some deaths involving prisoners.
When I shared this data 5 years ago many commenters correctly suggested the pre-2000 data and especially 1960s/1970s data was probably under-reported by a considerable degree. I think that's a reasonable view.