Thursday, October 18, 2007

Making Abortion Illegal

The New York Times had this story last week, but I didn't get to it till now.
ROME, Oct. 11 — A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.

Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for every 100 live births, the study said.

The results of the study, a collaboration between scientists from the World Health Organization in Geneva and the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a reproductive rights group, are being published Friday in the journal Lancet. Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare

Making it illegal doesn't prevent women from having the procedure done, it just makes it more dangerous, the alleyway instead of the sterile doctor's office.

I don't know why it's so hard to figure this out. It's not just abortion -- tell me, when did people ever drink more than during Prohibition? Psychologists found out a long time ago that punishment is not a very effective way to modify behavior. This is the perfect example; making it a crime does not make anybody choose not to do it, it just means that more women will die from it.

I think abortion is an especially hard topic to discuss, for one good reason: it requires cognitive effort. Some issues, people are for it or against it. That works for the binary-brained moralists, they can handle a topic like that, once they've been told which side they're supposed to be on. But with abortion, there's really nobody who's for it. Nobody likes the idea of abortion, it just happens to be something that some people feel is necessary for them sometimes. You don't know who it will be, or what their situation is -- the question is not whether you like abortion, but whether you think people should be able to make those kinds of choices for themselves. And that requires some thinking that's just a little too complicated for some people.

It's easy to say it's "killing babies" -- once you've defined it that way, you don't have to think any more, you can send your brain back out on vacation, and if anyone ever suggests that people should be able to make this kind of decision for themselves, just remember the phrase "baby killers." Because baby killers are bad. People who want to allow baby-killing are bad. Now the world is black and white again. Night-night, brain.
“We now have a global picture of induced abortion in the world, covering both countries where it is legal and countries where laws are very restrictive,” Dr. Paul Van Look, director of the W.H.O. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in a telephone interview. “What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion. If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.”

But the legal status of abortion did greatly affect the dangers involved, the researchers said. “Generally, where abortion is legal it will be provided in a safe manner,” Dr. Van Look said. “And the opposite is also true: where it is illegal, it is likely to be unsafe, performed under unsafe conditions by poorly trained providers.”

The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute.

Hey, there's an idea. Oh, I can see the betterthanyous shaking their heads at that idea. No, they're saying, the best way to reduce abortion rates is to stop having sex altogether, except when you want to make babies.

Hey, brilliant idea, yeah, that'll work. Let's just get people to stop having sex.

That would take care of a whole lot of problems in the world. I wonder why somebody hasn't thought of that already.

And let's make people be nice to each other, too, and keep their elbows off the table.
In Eastern Europe, where contraceptive choices have broadened since the fall of Communism, the study found that abortion rates have decreased by 50 percent, although they are still relatively high compared with those in Western Europe. “In the past we didn’t have this kind of data to draw on,” Ms. Camp said. “Contraception is often the missing element” where abortion rates are high, she said.

Anti-abortion groups criticized the research, saying that the scientists had jumped to conclusions from imperfect tallies, often estimates of abortion rates in countries where the procedure was illegal. “These numbers are not definitive and very susceptible to interpretation according to the agenda of the people who are organizing the data,” said Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education and research at the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund in Washington.

He said that the major reason women die in the developing world is that hospitals and health systems lack good doctors and medicines. “They have equated the word ‘safe’ with ‘legal’ and ‘unsafe’ with ‘illegal,’ which gives you the illusion that to deal with serious medical system problems you just make abortion legal,” he said.

No kidding, Sherlock, the anti-abortion groups criticized it. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because they disagreed with the study's conclusions.

It's automatic. The study is done to learn some facts. Then ... if you like the facts, the study's okay, if you don't like the facts, why, naturally, the study was flawed. We see this every day.
The study indicated that about 20 million abortions that would be considered unsafe are performed each year and that 67,000 women die as a result of complications from those abortions, most in countries where abortion is illegal.

That's sixty-seven thousand women killed every year by bad laws.

There's more. Click the link to read the rest of the story.

Let me show you how this story ties in to our MoCo sex-ed controversy. Earlier this year, the Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum filed an appeal with the Maryland State Board of Education to stop the new curriculum from being implemented. Their problem with it? Their members were treated unfairly by the other members of the MCPS citizens advisory committee (CAC).

From their complaint:
... the overwhelming majority of the members eventually selected by the MCPS Board to serve on the Second CAC are of the moral view that fully endorses homosexuality and some were openly hostile to the several CAC members who took a contrary, albeit tolerant and truly concerned, moral view. Many on the Second CAC are related to the abortion industry as well, certainly a beneficiary of increased teen sexual activity.

You see how that works? Of course there's nobody from the "abortion industry" on the committee, that's just another lie. One member represents NARAL, but she works at a school, she doesn't have anything to do with any "abortion industry," and anyway, that's one member out of fifteen. Last I looked, "one" was not "many." These lazy-minded people are satisfied implying that a group of volunteers from the community are trying to promote a health curriculum that will be good for the "abortion industry," even in legal papers filed with a government office. It works like this. The abortion industry wants to sell more abortions to teenagers. So they arrange to have members of their industry apply to be on the most boring committee in the world, and also arrange for the school board to favor those applications. Then, the committee can push for a curriculum that encourages teenagers to have promiscuous sex and get pregnant, and then they'll go out and get abortions. It's good for business, see?

We're dealing with people who think that that kind of story is believable.

Just think "baby killers." Baby-killers are bad, people who disagree with you are bad, therefore people who disagree with you are baby-killers. Night-night, brain.

15 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Psychologists found out a long time ago that punishment is not a very effective way to modify behavior."

Why not just do away with laws altogether then? Your simplistic statement doesn't take into account the severity of the penalty.

The crime of abortion has a victim. Just because you can't hear the victim scream, you rationalize away the evil done.

Your extended rationalization above is a perfect example.

What's more to us as a society:

the life of the weak or the pleasure and convenience of the strong?

Put more simply:

Are we civilized or barbaric?

October 18, 2007 8:28 AM  
Anonymous Andrew B. said...

As I have noticed previously here, the only apparently effective way to actually *reduce* abortion rates is comprehensive sexual education.

Which is better anon? "Barbarism" or teaching high school students about sex? (Maybe I shouldn't ask...)

Jim: I'd have to say the CAC was definitely NOT boring when I was on it. Complain that they aren't bringing you more amusing videos. (I recall one that we did not recommend where the actors pulled condoms out from everywhere - shirt pockets, a backpack. I still laugh about it three years later...)

October 18, 2007 10:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"As I have noticed previously here, the only apparently effective way to actually *reduce* abortion rates is comprehensive sexual education."

Think about what you're saying, Andrew.

What if we said "People are going to murder others anyway. Let's make it legal and reduce killings by just teaching people how to wear body armor and avoid leaving the house."

What if we said "These single mothers can't handle raising these kids. Let's provide clinics where she can have them put to sleep so she won't have to do something dangerous like kill them in an alleyway."

You'd be saying pretty much the same thing.

October 18, 2007 10:57 AM  
Anonymous Andrew B. said...

Anon, I am not "saying pretty much the same thing." I am saying that we should teach students. (Gasp! Teach them?!?)

In your murder "analogy" you face the false dilemma of either teaching people to protect themselves or making murder illegal and going after murderers. There is another option that our society generally uses: protect ourselves (by, for example, locking our doors and teaching our kids to stay away from strangers) AND go after murderers.

Back to the abortion case. You want to make abortion illegal and prosecute those who abort. I would guess that you would want to decrease the abortion rate since abortion is so upsetting to you. So why not do both? Utilize comprehensive sexual education AND make abortion illegal.

That said, I am personally in favor of legal abortions due in part to the concerns raised in Jim's post.

October 18, 2007 12:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Mother
by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

October 18, 2007 3:47 PM  
Blogger Dana Beyer, M.D. said...

Lovely poem, and it holds for all the spontaneous abortions (30-40% of all pregnancies) out there as well.

It is never an easy decision. I know of no one who has had one who wasn't greatly conflicted.

But I just love all the men who are willing to kill over abortion but won't lift a finger for a child after birth.

October 18, 2007 4:27 PM  
Anonymous Andrew B. said...

When faced with rational argument, our favorite anon responds with emotional appeals.

I'm all for emotional appeals. However, this particular one smacks of irrelevancy. Allow me to explain:

Jim posts a study that suggests that making abortion illegal has no effect on abortion rates and, in fact, puts women seeking abortions in greater danger. Anon responds we should make abortion illegal simply due to how morally disgusting it is. I note that we should teach comprehensive sexual education, since that is the only thing that seems to lower abortion rates. Anon responds by providing an analogy between what I said and society teaching people to avoid being murdered instead of making murder illegal. I respond by saying it is not a choice between education and legal prohibition -- society can choose both. Anon responds with a poem to convince us that abortion is horrible.

We all agree that abortion is not good. (Where we disagree is the extent to which abortion is abhorrent.) We all want to decrease the rate of abortions. The evidence suggests that 1) making abortion illegal does not actually stop abortions and 2) comprehensive sexual education does have an effect on decreasing abortion rates. Anon's poetic response that abortion is horrific is not really a response to anything at all here.

If Anon is truly as troubled by abortion as his/her posts demonstrate, then he/she should do whatever is possible to lower the abortion rate. The only known way to do that effectively is to teach comprehensive sexual education.

October 18, 2007 5:20 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

Andrew, I took the poem differently. I took the poem to show that even people who do choose abortion are haunted by it. As Anon earlier mentioned unwed mothers getting abortions, some would like to depersonalize and blame those who find themselves in the situation where they need to make that choice. It doesn't mean the decision is not painful, and that a woman doesn't live the rest of her life asking what if.

It's a hard decision, and the Anons who would simplify it to baby-killing are inhuman.

I didn't think the same Anon posted the poem as the other Anon, because the poem is too rich, too subtle, the bad guys have a good side, the poem-world is in color, not black and white.

JimK

October 18, 2007 5:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"It doesn't mean the decision is not painful, and that a woman doesn't live the rest of her life asking what if."

The victim of the crime doesn't live at all.

October 20, 2007 12:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I note that we should teach comprehensive sexual education, since that is the only thing that seems to lower abortion rates."

Hate to break it to you, Andrew, but there is little evidence that comp sex ed increases the use of birth control significantly much less reduces the abortion rate. Ab-only programs have been shown to reduce the average age of onset of sexual activity which would tend to reduce the teen pregnancy rate. This is not just theoretical, BTW. In the 70s, comp sex ed became the norm in the U.S. and the result was an explosion in teen pregnancy that didn't subside until the 90s when ab only programs began to spread across the country.

The whole idea that contraception will reduce abortion because then there will be fewer people conceived could actually be applied to any crime. For example, if we conceive fewer people then there will be fewer people to be robbed and so the numbers of robberies would go down. Instead of making robberies illegal, which doesn't seem to reduce the number of robberies, let's just encourage contraception so fewer robbery victims will be born.

October 20, 2007 8:16 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"unwed mothers getting abortions, some would like to depersonalize and blame those who find themselves in the situation where they need to make that choice."

Why choose this as the moment of choice? It could have been when deciding to engage in premarital sexual activity. But why be arbitrary? Why can't a single mother with a small kid, struggling to make ends meet, "need" to make a choice between killing it and continuing to be burdened by it? The idea is appalling and no different from abortion.

"It's a hard decision, and the Anons who would simplify it to baby-killing are inhuman."

TTF, it seems, believes it's inhuman to stand up for the victim and would only extend sympathy to the struggle to decide whether to kill or not.

October 20, 2007 8:33 AM  
Anonymous MCPS Mom said...

teen pregnancy that didn't subside until the 90s when ab only programs began to spread across the country.

In 1999, 48 out of 1,000 U.S. women ages 15-19 gave birth—a rate 11 times greater than in the Netherlands and four times higher than in Germany. The teen abortion rate in the United States is more than three times that of France and nearly seven times that of the Netherlands. Many factors influence the differences in teen sexual health between the U.S. and these other industrialized nations: affordable family planning services; sustained, realistic media campaigns; public health policy grounded in pragmatism and research; and sexuality information characterized by open, honest dialogue. Philosophically, many European countries accept that adolescents, especially older ones, are going to be sexually active. Therefore, policies and programs focus on protective behaviors and skills, which in turn lower both teen birth and teen abortion rates.

The whole idea that contraception will reduce abortion because then there will be fewer people conceived could actually be applied to any crime.

Contraception prevents unplanned pregnancies, which are the pregnancies many women seek to terminate. It has nothing to do with the number of people. Like the Post article reported, “What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion. If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.”

October 20, 2007 1:58 PM  
Anonymous Emproph said...

Dana Beyer, M.D. said...
"But I just love all the men who are willing to kill over abortion but won't lift a finger for a child after birth."

Well said, and so typical of the "family values" crowd.

Talk To Action has an article up today on that kind of mentality:

"The players of the Catholic Right love to parade their "pro-life" credentials. But judging by their deafening silence over President Bush's veto of legislation that would extend State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) coverage to lower-middle class children, their zeal to protect life apparently ends at birth."

Hypocrites.

October 20, 2007 2:06 PM  
Anonymous KitKat said...

Ab-only programs have been shown to reduce the average age of onset of sexual activity which would tend to reduce the teen pregnancy rate.

States that have ab-only education did reduce the teen preg rate, but the rate of teens contracting STDs surged.

August 16, 2008 1:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK, I find this totally stupid! I agree on sex education. But I could honestly care less about women having "alley" abortions. I mean, most women got theirselves into the situation in the first place, they need to take responsibility. So, it's ok to kill an unborn child but we don't want these women to die? That's a double standard if you ask me! They make the choice to have sex, they make the choice to have something stupid done, like an "alley abortion" so it's all on them. I'm sorry, but if they have the abortion done, knowing it's not safe then they get what they asked for. Simple as that. Abortion should be illegal, if not for the moral reasoning, then simply because murder is illegal.

April 11, 2009 4:40 PM  

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