Abortion is bad because China has too many smart students [restored]

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Well, I can safely say I’ve never heard this argument before. Here’s Ohio Rep. Jarrod Martin (R), speaking at an anti-abortion rally and making the novel claim that the United States must criminalize abortions because the United States doesn’t have enough bright students to compete with China’s academic prowess. Seriously.

Transcript, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

Martin: When you look at China and you look at their population, the population growth that China has and other Third World countries have compared to the population growth of the United States; China right now how more children in AP and gifted classes than the United States has in school. Think about that, they have more children in their gifted classes than we have in our entire school system. And we are killing thousands and tens of thousands of babies every year. How do we compete? We have to think about our future. That’s a little bit of economics behind this bill.

And I thought the argument that every aborted fetus could have grown to become the next Mozart or Einstein or Hitler or whatever was stupid enough as it is. I’d also like some verification on the claim that China has more Advanced Placement students than the US has kids in its entire school system. I’m sure Chinese kids are many and hard-working, but that seems rather far-fetched.