Taking count

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

When opponents of the war in Iraq note the death toll a common rejoinder is to point out how many U.S. lives are lost each year to abortion.

The statistics are shocking. An estimated 1.365 million abortions in 1996 alone (the last year for which figures are available). More than 40 million lives have been lost to abortion since the Supreme Court's tragic Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973. We must never lose sight of that outrageous reality.

But how do war deaths in Iraq compare with those numbers?

There is no so easy answer. Neither the Pentagon nor the ruling Iraqi government keeps a tally.

One highly respected website, Iraq Body Count (www.iraqbodycount.net) estimates, as of Nov. 18, 14,429 to 16,579 civilian deaths since the war began.

But earlier this month, the Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, released a paper based on a study by two prestigious American universities and a Baghdad college. It estimated a minimum of 100,000 war-related deaths.

Iraq Body Count, while not rejecting the numbers, noted they may include some combatant casualties. A Human Rights International analyst told the Washington Post the Lancet numbers seem inflated, though he did not say by how much.

But let's assume that 100,000 Iraqis were killed in an 18-month period after the war started. Just how would that compare to abortions? An estimated 25.4 million people live in Iraq. Using the U.S. abortion rate as a yardstick, a population of that size would have had 130,000 abortions in a one-year period (Iraqi war deaths in a year would be 66,600 based on a monthly average of the 100,000 estimate).

Of course, that's based on the U.S. average. But, abortion rates in California and New York are nearly twice the U.S. average; rates in Texas and Florida are a little above the average; Wisconsin's rate is about 60% of the average.

That would mean the number of war-related deaths in Iraq, using the Lancet figures, is approximately equal to Wisconsin's abortion rate. (If Iraq Body Count's lowest casualty figure is the correct one, that would equal Wyoming's abortion rate.) It also must be noted that abortion is forbidden under Islam and is illegal in Iraq, so no statistics are available. But the number of abortions is probably quite low, particularly since Iraq's birth rate is nearly three times that of the U.S.

It also should be noted that while Saddam Hussein killed tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis, nearly all of these murders occurred more than 10 years ago.

The point is, whether deaths are caused by abortion, war or a madman, human life is human life and must not be diminished. All life is sacred in God's eyes and, therefore, it also must be sacred in the eyes of Catholics.