December 13, 2012 - So yeah... the 39,000% increase is actually a little on the low side. We actually pay over 40,808.57% extra in taxes by not supporting government sponsored abortion but the numbers above are rounder, make more sense, and are easier to work with.
But in the interest of fairness, here are the real numbers. Firstly, Jennifer is paying above average for her pre-natal care, which I feel fits her character and makes the math easier. Pre-natal care actually costs about $2000 according to webmd. This does not take into account the cost of delivery which is another $9,600-$15,800 depending on vaginal or cesarean birth assuming minimal complications (which is where things can get really expensive). Next up is the cost of raising a child which this Forbes article indicates is between $12,290 and $14,320 or $234,900 to get it to 17. I notably rounded these costs up to $15,000 per year and age 18 for the comic, neither of which I feel are unreasonable increases because you want to spend the best on your kids and 18 is generally considered the age of adulthood instead of 17. Neither the comic nor the Forbes article factors in any education costs that will likely be heaped on top of this either (nor the costs of assisting the child should it have a learning disability). When all this math is added together the cost of carrying and raising a child to adulthood is roughly $250,205 minus the cost of delivery (which i didn't include as I don't want to calculate the relative frequency of vaginal births vs. cesarean births and it wasn't included in the comic), a bit short of the $273,000 number that didn't include delivery either but we haven't talked abortion costs yet and I was most invested in accurately representing the 39,000% figure.
The best data I could find on the average cost of an abortion is this article from 2001, which lists the cost between $350 and $550 with an average of $468. Obviously this article is a bit old, so I then plugged the numbers into the US Inflation Calculator and got results indicating the current range is more likely $457.41 and $718.78 which meets the "high end" estimate of $700 that Jennifer places on abortions. Using the same calculator the average becomes $611.62 which results in a percentage of 40,808.57% (which once again, doesn't cover delivery, even though unlike abortion this and many other related services are likely to be covered by the Affordable Care Act in the near future if they're not already). All this means that for every $40,808.57 you're paying in taxes (which I'm guessing is way more than most people pay in taxes), you could be paying $100 just by supporting abortion or fifty dollars if you pay half that in taxes or $20 if you pay one fifth of that number. Abortion significantly impacts a lot of seemingly unrelated issues, and if you care at all about the economy, an extremely strong argument can be made for its governmental support. Such support would likely destigmatize the procedure and reduce the financial burden placed on government organizations designed to protect unwanted children by reducing the number of children that end up in those programs. Those programs would still be needed and still exist, but instead of 0% of abortions being supported, 100% would be and thus such circumstances would become rarer. These numbers demonstrate such a sharp reversal of current policies regarding abortion and what they could mean for an issue like the economy.
-D
But in the interest of fairness, here are the real numbers. Firstly, Jennifer is paying above average for her pre-natal care, which I feel fits her character and makes the math easier. Pre-natal care actually costs about $2000 according to webmd. This does not take into account the cost of delivery which is another $9,600-$15,800 depending on vaginal or cesarean birth assuming minimal complications (which is where things can get really expensive). Next up is the cost of raising a child which this Forbes article indicates is between $12,290 and $14,320 or $234,900 to get it to 17. I notably rounded these costs up to $15,000 per year and age 18 for the comic, neither of which I feel are unreasonable increases because you want to spend the best on your kids and 18 is generally considered the age of adulthood instead of 17. Neither the comic nor the Forbes article factors in any education costs that will likely be heaped on top of this either (nor the costs of assisting the child should it have a learning disability). When all this math is added together the cost of carrying and raising a child to adulthood is roughly $250,205 minus the cost of delivery (which i didn't include as I don't want to calculate the relative frequency of vaginal births vs. cesarean births and it wasn't included in the comic), a bit short of the $273,000 number that didn't include delivery either but we haven't talked abortion costs yet and I was most invested in accurately representing the 39,000% figure.
The best data I could find on the average cost of an abortion is this article from 2001, which lists the cost between $350 and $550 with an average of $468. Obviously this article is a bit old, so I then plugged the numbers into the US Inflation Calculator and got results indicating the current range is more likely $457.41 and $718.78 which meets the "high end" estimate of $700 that Jennifer places on abortions. Using the same calculator the average becomes $611.62 which results in a percentage of 40,808.57% (which once again, doesn't cover delivery, even though unlike abortion this and many other related services are likely to be covered by the Affordable Care Act in the near future if they're not already). All this means that for every $40,808.57 you're paying in taxes (which I'm guessing is way more than most people pay in taxes), you could be paying $100 just by supporting abortion or fifty dollars if you pay half that in taxes or $20 if you pay one fifth of that number. Abortion significantly impacts a lot of seemingly unrelated issues, and if you care at all about the economy, an extremely strong argument can be made for its governmental support. Such support would likely destigmatize the procedure and reduce the financial burden placed on government organizations designed to protect unwanted children by reducing the number of children that end up in those programs. Those programs would still be needed and still exist, but instead of 0% of abortions being supported, 100% would be and thus such circumstances would become rarer. These numbers demonstrate such a sharp reversal of current policies regarding abortion and what they could mean for an issue like the economy.
-D
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