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O'Reilly on Tiller: 60,000 Abortions
On the 6/1/2009 "O'Reilly Report" on FoxNews, Bill O'Reilly repeated the claim that recently-murdered Dr. George Tiller had performed 60,000 abortions in his career. But is that possible?
Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, so if Dr. Tiller's abortions were all legal, they would have been performed in the last 36 years. Sixty thousand divided by 36 is about 1,667 per year. If Dr. Tiller took 4 weeks of vacation, sick leave, or other non-working days each year, that means he performed about 35 abortions a week, or about one an hour (assuming a 9-to-5 day with an hour off for lunch).
Performing an abortion an hour every working day for 36 years is a pace that would have taxed Lou Gehrig. I don't believe it happened.
Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, so if Dr. Tiller's abortions were all legal, they would have been performed in the last 36 years. Sixty thousand divided by 36 is about 1,667 per year. If Dr. Tiller took 4 weeks of vacation, sick leave, or other non-working days each year, that means he performed about 35 abortions a week, or about one an hour (assuming a 9-to-5 day with an hour off for lunch).
Performing an abortion an hour every working day for 36 years is a pace that would have taxed Lou Gehrig. I don't believe it happened.
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Tiller performed 60,000 abortions the same way Methuselah lived to be 969 years old.
O'Reilly probably believes both those things-- or claims to.
June 2, 2009 3:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
60,000 is total b.s. In the next sentence, after mentioning the 60,000, O'Reilly said: "According to the AP, Tiller performed more than 250 late-term abortions in 2003 alone."
250 x 36 = 9000.
To reach 60,000 Tiller had to average 1667 abortions per year, which means the 2003 stat must have been a really slow year! To say these stats back to back with a straight face requires a blindness only imaginable for O'Reilly.
June 2, 2009 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink