Recently a Fox News journalist ran a story about the number of abortions in the US. Since the 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs decision reversed the 1973 Roe v Wade decision. The Roe case overturned abortion limitations in the 45 states of the Union, which had not then legalized abortion. [per IZA.org study].

            So just what is the cost for an abortion?  The cost varies by type, from $800 for pills, to $2,000 for clinic at a six month term. [source https://www.plannedparenthood.org/blog/how-much-does-an-abortion-cost June 2022]. At a million abortions a year,  the $2,000 figure gives an estimate of a $2 billion annual industry.  But that is but a slight portion of the cost of abortions to America.

            Fox News quoted two sources on abortions,  the Guttmacher institute and the Center for Disease control. Unlike Deaths which have mandatory reporting and forms. There is not now, nor has there ever been a mandatory reporting of abortions to a governmental public health or other office to keep track of abortions. So the Guttmacher institute purports to survey abortion clinics and providers to come up with its statistics.  Fox News published the following on June 17, 2003, that ‘1.6 million abortions [are] performed in the U.S. each year.’  Among other statistics it notes that of mothers, ‘60% are white and 35% are black’.  The black percentage is 13.6% [https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045223]. The  Fox News of June 5, 2022 updated the statistic to a million abortions for the year of 2020. And Fox News  story on May 4, 2022, wrote ‘more than 63 million abortions are estimated to have taken since the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling.’  

            Abortion’s economic cost has been little discussed, concerning the lives which never were.  But the cost can be quantified. A November 25, 2023 Fox News column by Kendall Tietz quoted a study from the Institute of Labor Economics about abortion, whose authors made abortion access a matter of ‘financial stability’  such as ‘falling behind on the rent or losing a job’.  [https://docs.iza.org/dp16608.pdf The Effects of the Dobbs Decision on Fertility]

            Can we quantify the value of loss of life from each abortion? How much is an American human life worth? The following excerpt is from Perspectives on Income Taxation – Claims,  Chapter 8  Good Lower Taxes due to splitting income, 2024 publishing pending by IGI Publishing, John Choate author.

For instance, the wealth of a state or community can be calculated.  And from that community wealth calculation, the value of each person can be quantified.

 A portion of community wealth is the visible tax base, which are those properties which can be taxed to support local fire, police, libraries, schools, roads, bridges, parks and recreation.   Non visible assets such as stocks, bonds, bank deposits,  education,  weather, energy, jobs, are not readily available for comparison by references to publicly available data.  A lot of wealth is hidden behind closed doors, which may be out of town, out of state or foreign.  These assets are available for economic growth, but not for  community taxation. Visible taxable assets include property, to wit commercial and residential real estate, and personal property, such as cars, boats, or transportation.

A comparison of Visible assets is illustrative of the difference in wealth per capita, of concern by the Founding fathers.  Visible assets gave approximate values as follows.   As of 2022,   Per capita wealth is calculated by dividing population into the taxable property fair market value. Three locations are given as examples, one on the east coast, one from the west coast, and one from the middle states.

Connecticut, Greenwich – $774,000 is the per capita wealth.  The taxable  Grand list is  $33.9 Billion, and the FAIR MARKET VALUE (FMV)  $48 Billion of the visible property.  mil rate 11, population 62,000.

https://www.greenwichct.gov/DocumentCenter/View/31768/Final-Budget-2022- 2023?bidId=

Oklahoma Seminole – $76,600 is the per capita wealth. .  The taxable property assessed valuation  is $205,000,000 (11% of FAIR MARKET VALUE (FMV) ); and the  FMV $1.8 Billion of the visible property. Population 23,500 in 2021.

www.sai.ok.gov.   Seminole county.   [Seminole’s per capita wealth is one tenth of Greenwich Connecticut and one twenty fourth of Beverly Hills California.]

California Beverly Hills – $1,826,000 is the per capita wealth, The population 33,400. The taxable property  assessed valuation of approximately $42.7 billion, and the FAIR MARKET VALUE (FMV)   $61 Billion, mil .04 rate  $100.

https://beverlyhills.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=49&event_id=5747&meta_id=530731

            These 3 examples show a range of quantified wealth from $76 thousand to over $One million eight hundred thousand per person.  Multiplying by 63 million abortions gives a range of $4 triilion788 billion at the lower end of  $76 thousand per capita of Oklahoma. Or a range of $48 trillion 762 billion at the middle range of $774 thousand per capita of Connecticut. Or a range of  $115 trillion 38 billion at the upper range of $1.8 million per capita in California.  These figures represent the losses to America’s wealth based on the estimated abortions over 2 generations.

            This is illustrative of the value of persons over a broad area.  

            However the visible assets lack the value of investments in bonds, stocks, life insurance, annuities,  coins, cash hoards, art, books, patents, intellectual property, trade marks, education, and other which are not readily available for comparison.

            The United States government does have a means by which it unobtrusively values human life.  A recent example, circa 2002, was used to reimburse families of the three thousand Americans who lost their lives in the attacks on 9/11 in New York City, Arlington Virginia, and Pennsylvania.  The amount of reparations was $2 and a half million per victim, each claim approved by the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, listed by the Department of Justice, at oig.justice.gov, and a 911 Health and Compensation Act. An additional 4,400 physical injury applications were processed. The task was reportedly assuming a $2.5 million per life,  offset by insurance or payments if received.

https://www.justice.gov/archive/victimcompensation/comp_deceased.html

            This raises the range of life extinguished value to $157 trillion, 500 billion, based on life value of $2.5 million times 63 million abortions.

            To bring the dollar value up to date, we can observe the first class postage stamp was 37 cents, which has increased to 68 cents, an increase of 183% in the two decades.  

            So,  adjusting the $2.5 million per life to 2024, raises the amount to $4,575,000 per person based on the 2001 life valuation.  This raises the value adjusted to current purchasing power to $288 trillion, 225 billion. By comparison, the global stock market is estimated at $109 trillion, tripling in amount since 2003. [source visualcapitalist.com Sep 27,2023]. The US Residential real estate is estimated at $47 trillion and the global real estate is $379.7 trillion, [benoitproperties.com June 2023, costar.com].  Revenue of American food is about $1 trillion in 2024. [www.statista.com]. The National Debt exceeds $34 Trillion, and increasing  about $40 billion a week [fiscaldata.treasury.gov].

            The point of this explanation is to show that abortion has been a enormous drag on the wealth of America over the past 5 plus decades.  In summary,  the true cost of abortion is nine times the national debt, of wealth that has been foregone because of this policy.