Infographics: Is Georgia ready to ban abortion?

In his 2014 Christmas Epistle, the Patriarch of Georgia Ilia II focused on issues of abortion, artificial in vitro insemination and surrogacy. "It is horrible to even imagine that according to unofficial data, a million abortions are done in Georgia every year and no one attempts to stop this." "How cans a family, where abortion is made, be happy, the epistle reads. "How can a family, where a child born by a surrogate mother is raised, be happy? This little child is doomed to be deprived of love and is doomed to loneliness from the very beginning."

Earlier in his 2013 Easter epistle, Georgian Patriarch Ilia II called on the Georgian government to adopt anti-abortion legislation. Our colleagues from JumpStart Georgia inquired as to how ready Georgia was to ban abortions and care for children who would then become state dependent babies. Based on 2012 abortions, stillbirth, and infant mortality rates, as well as the 2013 year state budget for child care, JumpStart Georgia calculated how much it would cost the state to care for all these children. Calculations reflect an extreme case and do not include numerous factors that could affect the number of children needing state or church-funded care.