Catholic Family Vignettes

From Human Life International:

How Many Heisman Winners Has Abortion Killed?

The sports world recently greeted the news that this year’s Heisman Trophy Winner, Tim Tebow from the University of Florida, was almost a casualty of abortion. Twenty-some years ago he was not the strapping 6’3”, 235 lb. beloved sports hero that he is today. At that time he was a one-inch-long unborn child whose existence, because of an amoebic infection, was defined as threat to his mother’s health. Pam Tebow, his mother, was told by a doctor that it would be in her best interests to abort this baby, and she refused. Her husband backed her up on that generous decision, and seven months later they gave birth to a perfectly healthy boy. Little did they know that twenty years later they would be standing on a national stage with a Heisman Trophy winner giving that magnificent witness to life. The world thanks you, Mr. and Mrs. Tebow! There cannot be a more touching Advent story than this.

I wonder if anyone has ever asked how many potential Heisman Trophy winners abortion has actually killed. The answer is, twelve. Reflect on that a bit as you read further because there is a larger lesson in the Tebows’ witness.

Dr. Brian Clowes, HLI researcher, has examined the data from the 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States (most recent census data) and extrapolated the numbers of the various professions and categories of Americans who have been eliminated in the wake of nearly 49 million legalized abortions, one third of all Americans conceived since 1973. The following numbers are based on the actual government estimates of the professions represented in America. So then, who have we lost to abortion?

* 2 US Presidents
* 7 Supreme Court Justices
* 102 US Senators and 589 Congressmen
* 8,123 Federal, district and local court judges
* 31 Nobel Prize laureates
* 328 Olympic medalists including 123 Gold medalists
* 6,092 professional athletes
* 134,841 physicians and surgeons
* 392,500 registered nurses
* 70,669 priests, ministers, rabbis and imams including
* 6,852 priests and 11,010 nuns (vocations “shortage”?)
* 1,102,443 teachers (K-12)
* 553,821 truck drivers
* 224,518 maids and housekeepers
* 336,939 janitors
* 134,028 farmers and ranchers
* 109,984 police officers and sheriff’s deputies
* 39,477 firefighters
* 17,221 barbers, and
* 24,450,000…women (the gender of roughly half of all children aborted).



These numbers of course are only the tip of the iceberg. Keep in mind that we get our statistics about abortion from the abortion industry itself which has a vested interest in under-reporting the numbers. Likewise, these categories are only a few of the professions that Americans actually work in and are by no means a full portrayal of the total American workforce. What they represent, however, is the immense human toll that abortion takes on a society. Abortion-promoters present abortion as an exclusively private choice, but thirty-five years of abortion exposes the perniciousness of that lie. There is a social toll that comes from abortion which cannot easily be corrected.

For three and a half decades the feminists have reveled in a misleading “freedom to choose,” and on the basis of that false “right” have eliminated their children and done immense damage to the family as the basic unit of society. Those who respect these sacred realities, on the other hand, have their wives and husbands to grow old with, their children to enjoy and their grandkids to play with and spoil. The love of life, marriage and family never leaves its adherents penniless, lonely or abandoned, and every now and then God throws in a Heisman Trophy just to show the rest of us that it’s all worth it.

Sincerely Yours in Christ,


Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,
President, Human Life International