posted
But it doesn't prove that suicide is a complication of abortion. Do you understand/agree to that?
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
According to Frisco's link, minorities and low income are over-represented (occur at higher rates) in the unintended pregnancy and abortion numbers (I've switched computers, sorry if I'm messing this up) so yeah, the cohort of women who have abortions is likely to include higher mortality as well for socioeconomic reasons. At least, this is the case in the U.S.
Remember that thread about pregnant women being twice as likely to be murdered last year? :goes off to look: P.S. Couldn't find it. There is a pregnant woman missing here in SLC, and the media at least is growing increasingly suspicious of her husband.
posted
Edit: This is a random rant. Take it for what you will.
I am a pragmatist. I believe in abstainence and will preach it to my dying breath. I hope that I can have some influence for good in that area. But for people that have decided not to practice abstainence I believe they need to know about and use responsible birth control and protection.
So while I am not against teaching birth control and so called "safe sex", I am angered by those who will not teach abstainence or only gloss over it, giving it grudging lip service. What is to be gained by that?
posted
I wasn't led down the path, CT. I certainly don't believe that women are 250% more likely to die after having an abortion than women who complete the pregnancy. It's just difficult finding any studies that acknowledge anything beyond the .007% and .0006% death rates.
Posts: 270 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Actually the study looks pretty rock solid, lots of good data. It's the analysis that's ridiculousl but don't discount the numbers just because someone spun them. If I have time, I'm going to delve a little deeper into this.
posted
I'm sorry, I have no intention of being condescending. But I looked at your wording, and it seems that you believe that suicide is a complication of abortion. I just don't want think it's reasonable to accept simple causality between the two.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Suicide is also a complication of childbirth. The hormones are insanely high, and coming off that is incredibly stressful.
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quote:Kate Hoffman, for example, who aborted a fetus with Down syndrome, was quoted in The Times on June 20 as saying: "I don't look at it as though I had an abortion, even though that is technically what it is. There's a difference. I wanted this baby."
I know the conversation's moved on, but I just wanted to add that this passage made me want to vomit far more than the T-shirt did.
posted
Uh, Hobbes, that data's trash at least as far as conclusions in the area the entire article is about are concerned.
All data is good data, in the "world context", but the world context is not humanly considerable, we can only look at little slices of it. They're looking at one slice and trying to talk about a different one, which makes it bad data in context.
Now, most bad data is more obviously troubled than this data -- for instance, by not even being an accurate overview of any part of the world context, just random data points from many different places and subcontexts, and considered in the wrong contexts.
posted
It is sooooo hard to glean empirical data out of human populations where social issues are concerned. It certainly isn't a "hard science".
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posted
Mine was more of a semantical argument Fugu, I didn't look that hard but it looks like most of the data that would be relevant to a discussion like this was collected (age, economic status, etc), so all that data is there, it just takes someone to go through and make concluesions about what it says that's lacking, or rather someone who goes through and makes reasonable concluesions. So I agree, bad context for this data, at best incredibly bad representation of context, I'm just saying, look a little harder at the number themeselves, they could be meaningful, the fact that the guy/girl who wrote the article isn't knolwedgable about it doesn't prove the study is worthless.
posted
Dag- That article says there are no hard numbers, but we do know 3% times over a million. So that's about 30,000 abortions of children with suspected birth defects annually. And I'll stick my uneducated (in statistics) foot in my mouth by saying I bet a disproportionate number of those are insured with good prenatal care, the opposite spectrum of the "average" abortion patient.
Abortion is only ethical where the mother does not see the fetus as a human. Whether due to defect or because she can't afford to take care of it, I still think it's a bad reason.
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posted
Hobbes, taking a pile of numbers and trying to form a conclusion from them is nightmare. You really do have to start with your hypothesis and design a data set that will allow you to answer your question. If someone dumps a mittful of data in my lap and asks me what it means, dollars to doughnuts I'm going to tell them it's crap.
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quote:That might be because those are the accurate numbers.
From the actual surgical process, yes. I don't dispute those. I just think there's more to it than that.
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posted
You're right, I mis-spoke, these "results" from the article indicate that either the article made it's own concluesions, or the whole study was bad, I don't remember what I said exactly but if I used the word "study" I was wrong, the study was bad. But it looks like there's some very good numbers there, a semi-decent study will publish readable numbers without spin (suicide percentage for those who had an abortion, average economic status of same group, so on), and if those numbers are there then it doesn't take an expert, just not a fool to get something meaningful. It's my pet-peeve to ignore numbers because the spin on them is bad, ignore the spin, pay attention to the numbers. Now of course if there was something wrong with the way the numbers were gathered then absolutley throw the number out with the spin.
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kate Hoffman, for example, who aborted a fetus with Down syndrome, was quoted in The Times on June 20 as saying: "I don't look at it as though I had an abortion, even though that is technically what it is. There's a difference. I wanted this baby." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know the conversation's moved on, but I just wanted to add that this passage made me want to vomit far more than the T-shirt did.
Thanks, Dag.
The fact is we all tell ourselves whatever lies we need to get by with the inevitable contradictions in our lives. If Hoffman needs to sell this curious reasoning to herself as a means to get by, that's her business.
Putting it out there publicly is a way of suggesting we all buy into the lie. It's not private any more.
I am grateful the author of the op-ed blew the whistle on the the absurdity of the logic in the statement about the fetus/whatever with DS being a "wanted" one.
posted
Think of this in terms of venn diagrams. You have the women who died, and the women who had pregnancies, and those're two overlapping areas. Even if you look at every woman who died and analyze that data to the end of your days, you will never know how many women had pregnancies, and you can't even work out a simple percentage of women who had pregnancies who died. There's just no way of moving from data purely about women who died to analysis of the relative dangers of abortions versus non-aborted pregnancies.
The only way a study can be can make statistically valid conclusions about a population is if it samples from that population (note that one can sometimes sample in some pretty esoteric ways). Its one of the most basic rule in sampling. Since this study did not sample from the populations of women with abortions or women with non-aborted pregnancies, it can't make statistically valid conclusions about either one. It can make statistically valid conclusions about women who died, but we're not debating which one causes a higher percentage of deaths among women who died, but which causes a higher percentage of deaths in respect to rate of occurence of the practices (abortion and carrying a baby to term).
edit: a study can also make statistically valid conclusions about a population by correctly cross referencing peripheral data with existing good analysis of a population. However, this is very hard to prove it is done correctly, and is done very rarely. Its pretty much always better to sample the population again.
posted
The term "sig fig" is rattling around in my brain. Does that apply to the "ten times more likely" numbers, the .006 and the .0007?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Depends if the 0.006 was calculate to 0.0060 and truncated when printed or not. If it wasn't calculated to the 4th decimal place than they should be 0.006 and 0.001. As to whether either difference is statistically significant, I haven't a clue as I haven't seen the study.
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quote: Abortion is only ethical where the mother does not see the fetus as a human.
quote: I am grateful the author of the op-ed blew the whistle on the the absurdity of the logic in the statement about the fetus/whatever with DS being a "wanted" one.
Both of these get right to the crux of the issue: Does the value of a being derive from the worth placed on it by another or is it an intrinsic attribute of that being?
there's a pretty good article written a few years ago by Mary Wilt, who has a child with Down syndrome. The article talks about her reactions to the sites mentioned in the op-ed. (Mary also organized an immense campaign of protest letters when Peter Singer was appointed to a tenured position at Princeton.)
quote:They miss their little angels, their children who have predeceased them and gone to heaven. So they construct web pages in memory of these angel babies. Each little one is listed by name, with a sweet saying from Mom, the diagnosed condition which precipitated their death, and the date they were aborted.
(I don't think the links for the websites in the article work any more. They changed the URLs after the publication of this article.)
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:For that matter, is there such a thing as intrinsic value?
I think so. Or at least I think there is such a thing as value that is not related in any way to other human beings. It would be an interesting theological discussion to see if human worth in Christianity is an intrinsic attribute imbued by the Creator or if human worth derives from the value which God places on the created humans. From our perspective, though, it amounts to the same thing.
I realize this presupposed a Christian worldview, but I have no other framework for examining this issue. When I say politics cannot be seperated from religion, this is what I mean. The underlying dignity due all human beings in my worldview derives solely from my understanding of this doctrine.
I realize others arrive at similar conclusions in a very different way. But this is the no-compromise-possible crux of my religious beliefs.
Dagonee Edit: I only got halfway through that page, Steven. I'll try finishing it later - it's difficult.
quote:This will be our second pregnancy. Our first ended September 13th, 1996 when I was 20.5 weeks pregnant and we recieved a diagnosis of Down Syndrome (Trisomy 21). It was a girl - Kaylee Shawn. Now she's our angel.
Oh my stars. I had to read that a couple times. She had an abortion when she found out her daughter would have Down's Syndrome.
It's right there! That's it's better to be dead than alive with that condition. You have to stumble past the euphamisms to get at what she was actually saying.
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I suspect, although I haven't parsed it out thoroughly, that these women are actually being encouraged to frame these abortions as acts of compassion rather than acts of "simple" self-determination. Months ago, I linked to a site that specializes in these kinds of abortions. There's a lot about "grieving" in the literature on the site. And they use the terms "delivery" and "stillbirth" instead of "abortion."
*saying, in my best Haley Osmond voice: "I see social workers!"
Like I said, it's one thing to stick with private lies to maintain equilibrium. There's an effort here to convince the public to embrace the lie.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
What is the difference between killing a 20 week old fetus because it has Downs Syndrome and killing a newly born baby because it has Downs Syndrome?
I just got an email from a good friend on the subject of abortion. This is how she started her email:
quote: A small puppy found its way to our doorstep. I don't want the puppy but I don't want to go through the trouble of finding it a different home. I've seriously been thinking of killing it then just disposing of the body or just blending up the pieces so I can add it to my compost pile. I mean, it's just a dog. And right now, my life plans don't include a dog.
She only made mention of this because the rest of her email was about abortion, not because she was planning on killing a puppy. Just so you know. She cannot have children of her own and is waiting to adopt her second child. She recently advised a good friend to consider adopting out the child in her womb that she plans to abort. She has very strong feelings on this issue.
I am glad, glad, glad that there are people like you fighting this. It really is appalling - the purpose of having that happy, bubbly blog posted was to reassure people that it's okay to have an abortion to avoid having a baby with Down syndrome, because if they do, they could get TWINS! So much better!
posted
Sorry to disappoint you Kat, but I don't work on abortion issues at all. I've said more about the topic here on Hatrack than I've said in public for at least 8 years.
The organization I work for is strictly limited to dealing with life and death issues after birth - which, I'm sorry to say, keeps my plate very full.
But one can see how these websites lay out - at the very least - an emotional foundation for outright infanticide.
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I have a harder time reading people trying to explain why this is a good thing than I do about the grisly details of D&E procedures, for exactly the reasons sndrake gave - it's an attempt to spread evil. "My little angel."
OK, now I've worked myself into a state. Once again, you have my respect, drakester.
in case I haven't said it clearly enough. In both matters in which we agree and matters in which we disagree...
You have my respect as well.
(As a matter of fact, you now come to mind when I hear the term "conservative." The name that used to come to mind was "Rush Limbaugh" - how's that for progress? )
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Back on the T-shirts, I guess I could wear the one about discontinuing Grandma’s life support. In fact, I could wear two. The decision wasn’t mine in either case, but I supported both of my grandmothers’ decisions not to use feeding tubes or IV fluids, even though they might have prolonged their lives.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
See, Dana, you've hit on the fuzziness of the "pulling the plug" thing. Supporting someone else's expressed wishes wasn't even on my original list.
How about this one?
"Euthanized my cat because she was peeing on the rug"
(which, btw, is a very common reason for cats being put down, along with:)
"Euthanized my cat because it cost too much to treat her illness"
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I’m having a hard time with how to draw lines, or at least how to phrase them. I heard recently that an anti-abortion bill being presented to some state legislature (Utah, I think) was so strict that it would prohibit terminating a pregnancy even if the fetus had already died. That’s too tight.
I know two women whose babies died in-utero. In both cases they had to wait several days (a week?) after the doctor was pretty sure the baby was dead in order to be absolutely sure. Once an ultrasound showed that the bones were decomposing labor was induced. I don’t think this was less moral/ethical than to wait until their bodies went into labor on their own. I guess technically these might have been abortions – the pregnancy (though not the life of the fetus) was artificially terminated. Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
dk, did the anti-abortion bill that was presented pass, then? I'm confused about the connection between the two paragraghs. I haven't heard of any anti-abortion bill anything close to that strict passing, so if the women had to wait, it couldn't have been for that reason.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
No no, these were both years ago, and they didn't have to wait past the one week to be sure.
What I was told (and I haven't read the bill myself, so this is all hearsay) is that pregnancies could not be legally terminated at all, which would mean that in those cases, rather than having to wait a week and induce, they would have had to carry the dead baby until labor occurred naturally.
Edit: The connection between the paragraphs is my thinking about the agony they went through during the one week, and imagining that continuing for weeks or months. Not that "getting it over with" ends the agony, but it does at least let you move to the next stage of it.
posted
That sounds strange - I'm pretty sure (hopefully CT will pop up soon) that a dead fetus is a significant threat to the life of the mother. The dead tissue is bound to become a source of infection, isn't it?
("mother" in this context doesn't seem weird somehow)
I couldn't tell you if it's actually an increasing trend or if we are simply hearing more about it in the news.
I'm inclined to suspect these women married bad men and becoming pregnant was just happenstance. If not the pregnancy, something else would have happened to set them off.
posted
Dana, that's the kind of law that gets drafted by someone who's not thinking from first principles. Or is just plain nuts. I can't decide which.
posted
Kat, Roe v. Wade had nothing to do with it. They waited because neither they nor their doctors wanted to make a mistake. Even if there was only a one in a million chance that the earlier test might have been wrong, they would have jumped at it.
sndrake, I suspect you're right. I also suspect a lot of the people campaigning for super-super-strict no-exception abortion laws aren’t looking at those types of nuances.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Didn't that happen to Anne Boleyn? She was pregnant, and then ten months later was still pregnant, and she ended up having the stillborn baby taken out from her.
I think I was sensitive to it because it was attributed to Utah - which has obvious connotations.
posted
Sorry. I was afraid the fact that I think it was from Utah would be touchy. I'm almost positive it was something Bob read in the paper when he was in SLC. But it might have been somewhere else. (I tend to get drowsy when he reads stuff over the phone at night, and sometimes the conversations blend together.) And he's been traveling so stinking much in the last two months that it's hard to keep track.
posted
I would think that such a bill passed in any state, let alone any country, would elicit much outcry and press. Perhaps it was a bill being proposed? I honestly can't imagine such a bill being passed.
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