Life and numerical indicators of life

In the shadow of the birthday of Jesus, we take stock of our personal lives with New Year’s resolutions. As a country, in the third week of January, the pro-life movement gathers in Washington to take stock of the value of human life in our country since abortion became a civil right by arbitrary judicial decree in 1973. The numbers are always sobering, even when the number of abortions has fallen slightly, as it has this year. While I will be in Rome to give a talk on the Church’s missionary movement and cannot be part of the annual prayer vigil for life and the march for life on January 21-22, I am thankful to all those from the Archdiocese, especially the seminarians, who will take part in this peaceful demonstration. As the U.S. Catholic Bishops wrote in 1998: “We commend all who proclaim and serve the Gospel of life. By their peaceful activism, education and prayer, they witness to God’s truth and embody our Lord’s command to love one another as he loved us.”

Part of the bitterness surrounding President Clinton’s administration was the result, it seems to me, of the manner in which he chose, just after his inauguration as President eight years ago, the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision to remove by executive order every possible restriction on abortion that he could remove. Now the pro-abortion forces are using every possible device and ploy to prevent any reversal or qualification of this country’s anti-life policies, to which Mr. Clinton as president was unfailingly faithful. If anybody imagines that abortion is not the defining issue in U.S. politics, he or she isn’t reading the newspapers; and it isn’t right-wing extremists who have made it the central issue it has become. The right to abort a baby is an article of faith for many politicians, entertainers, journalists and academics; any restriction on the right to kill an unwanted baby will be fought with a totally immoderate fervor.

Looking back at the eight years of President Clinton’s administration, however, some global trends indicate that human beings, if allowed to come from the womb, can protect life effectively. While global statistics are never completely reliable, the United Nations Human Development Report for 2000 gives some interesting numbers. Global infant mortality per one thousand live births fell from 60.5 eight years ago to 54.5 today, and U.S. infant mortality from 8.6 to 7.0. This is good news; but it is smothered in the statistic on the rise in the incidence of HIV/AIDS, from 12 million eight years ago to over 34 million today.

Death through armed conflict has diminished, if the U.N. statistics are correct. The number of armed conflicts worldwide fell from 33 to 27. Consequently, the number of refugees worldwide is now 11.5 million, a decrease from over 18 million eight years ago. Global military spending has also decreased, from $817 billion to $696 billion (in U.S. dollars), as has U.S. military spending, from $33l billion to $289 billion. Both global and U.S. exports of major conventional weapons are slightly reduced, and the number of countries that officially possess nuclear weapons is down from nine to eight.

The wealth necessary to sustain life has increased dramatically in the past eight years. The global gross domestic product has grown (in U.S. dollars) from $5,410 per capita in 1992 to $6,526 dollars per capita in 2000. That the wealth is not well distributed globally is reflected in the far greater growth in U.S. GDP from $23,760 to $29,605. Nevertheless, the global number of people living on less than one dollar per day has fallen from a 1.3 billion to 1.2 billion. Global foreign direct investment has increased four-fold (from $193 billion to $865 billion U.S.), and U.S. foreign direct investment is almost six times greater now than it was eight years ago (from $49 to $275 billion). Not every one sees foreign investment as an unmixed blessing (the loss of corporate business headquarters to Chicago is the result, in part, of foreign investors buying the companies previously headquartered here); but capital, from any source, is necessary for economic development.

All these numbers could change quickly, of course, but they indicate that the conditions of human life on earth have improved significantly in the last eight years. The extent to which that improvement is the result of the U.S. administration, President Clinton’s or any other’s, is always debatable; and the debates are never settled just by quoting economic and health statistics. Nevertheless, as we take stock of our lives at the beginning of the year, the numbers can give us encouragement and should be a source of some satisfaction to the outgoing presidential administration.

The most important number, of course, is not available to us: how many human beings, conceived, born, raised and spending any number of years of life here make it to eternal life in heaven? The fundamental importance of that number is the reason for the Church’s missionary activity. On January 20, I’ll be giving a talk before the Holy Father on developments in mission during the last ten years. The statistics on the growth of the Church and the activities of missionaries are the stuff of another column. On the weekend of January
19-21, I would ask you to keep in your prayers myself in Rome and the pro-life demonstrators in Washington. God
bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago