Abortion and COVID-19: Two Pandemics By the Numbers, by John Grondelski

Since 1973, there have been 61,628,584 abortions in America — a pandemic on an unprecedented scale

By John Grondelski, National Catholic Register, October 5, 2020

There’s a reason that Mark Twain wrote the three falsehoods were “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Once you get beyond above numbers you can count on your 10 fingers, they start getting abstract. Without first counting them out, try to imagine in your head a picture of even 12 people. Now count how many people are actually in your picture. My guess is that at least half of you will have imagined fewer or more.

As numbers get bigger, they get more abstract. I remember, many years ago, sitting in a Saturday evening Mass, struck by how few people were in the church compared to its size. I estimated there were 40 people there but, sitting in the back row, I decided to do a headcount. There were actually 26.

Now I know what the late Senator Everett Dirksen might have meant by the aphorism popularly attributed to him: “a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”  …