Confusion, Dismay and Hypocrisy

This is what Planned Parenthood prefaces its message with to those supporters whose senators voted in favor of the Blunt Amendment.

After weeks of debate and an enormous outcry from Planned Parenthood supporters nationwide, the Senate rejected the Blunt amendment, a measure that would have allowed any employer to deny women who work for them insurance coverage for birth control and other essential health benefits if the employer had a moral or religious objection. The message is clear: birth control is basic health care, and your medical decisions should be between you and your doctor.

No, Planned Parenthood, you DON'T believe medical decisions should be between you and your doctor. You want to include all of us right down to our wallets.

It's not enough that your organization provides birth control virtually free and clear to women who present in your clinic. You're not satisfied that women have almost unlimited access to abortion at any stage of pregnancy if the doctor can argue that the health (including mental health) of the mother is in danger. You want your boss, even if she opposes it to her core, to pay for your birth control.

This is a kind of religious fanaticism, conversion at sword's point.

Oh, Hey, Guess What, Thousands of People Are Marching on Washington

Thousands and thousands of peaceful protesters walk to the Capitol steps (or, you know, as close as Osama bid Laden lets them) for dozens of the 35 years since Roe v. Wade, but that's not really news, is it?

Yahoo! is my home page. Nope, nothing there.

Google gets misty-eyed and customized on MLK Jr Day, but try finding something about the March for Life.

Well, Anna at Dakota Women remembers it, and pines for a day when Roe is stronger. (No, no she's not an extremist.)

They might not celebrate the day the bloody procedure that keeps them in business was sanctioned, but everyday is a celebration at Abortionclinicdays, where we get to read about a women deluded enough to think she "and her baby" are going to go through this abortion thing together.

Marnie had chosen to have a medical abortion and we discussed what that would feel like for her. “It is very important for me to take responsibility for this,” she said, “and do it myself.” She had had a prior miscarriage and felt confident that she could work through the cramping and bleeding as the pregnancy passed. This was going to be private, sacred time, she explained. She had prepared her bedroom at home, bought a new bible and had selected some scripture that she felt spoke to her situation. “I need this to be respectful,” she said, “Me and the baby are going to work through this together.” I offered some scripture I share with women about God's all-encompassing love and we hugged as she was leaving. I told her that I'd be thinking of her and thanked her for letting us care for her. The level of peace and confidence she displayed were so moving.

March on. Even if they don't report it.

Seeking Female in South Dakota, S or M, Must be Judicious, Thoughtful, Open Minded. Sense of Humor Optional.

I have been looking around for bloggers who call my new home theirs: South Dakota.

I've linked to about five, so far. One of them, Lone Prairie, I've been reading for years, and so should you. Another I've been reading off and on is Dakota Women.

These aren't women I generally agree with, but they're women interested in politics in South Dakota, and I was hoping for some lively discussion and the occasional meeting of the minds.

I did not anticipate meeting a writer as unbalanced as Anna. To call her writing biased is an understatement. To Anna, there are two kinds of people: Good people and the deceitful, indifferent, cold-hearted despots who call themselves pro-life.

Two weeks ago, she was complaining (generous word) that the vast right-wing conspiracy known as the pro-life movement makes women act like "helpless, idiotic victims."

Today, she claims that "Olga Reyes is merely one out of about 70,000 women who will die this year as a result of restrictions on abortion." (Ms. Reyes died because of her country's uber-restrictive abortion laws that don't permit doctors to perform an abortion when the life of the mother is in jeopardy.) Never mind that the need for an abortion as the result of an ectopic pregnancy is an exception, not the rule, and you would be hard-pressed to find a reasonable pro-lifer in the U.S. who supports a ban on abortion on these cases.

But that would be the balanced approach; it would show signs of thoughtfulness and consistency. Instead, Anna maintains that women die as a result of restrictive laws--and not as a result of their own choice to terminate an inconvenient pregnancy, nay. Helpless victims, anyone?

Later she blithely accuses "lots of people" (this means pro-life people in Dakota Women parlance) of "not be[ing] troubled in the least if stuff like this happened here."

That's "not being troubled in the least" if women die painful, preventable deaths in case you had trouble connecting the dots.

I wasn't very nice in the comments.

I have been quarreling.

At Dakota Women, pro-lifers have been accused of being dishonest about their motivation behind opposing abortion.

As evidence of this dishonesty, the author has linked to this article, that cites this report. (This is only the abstract. You have to register--free--if you want to read the study).

ADDED: I suspect few of my readers are going to read this whole post (not even my adversary at Dakota Women can be bothered to do it). So why don't the rest of you just click on that link above and go read our debate.

Before I proceed, I want to make this very clear: I believe that women have and will continue to have abortions, regardless of its legality. This does not mean that I do not want to reduce the number of abortions, or that I don't care about those women injured by the procedure. But that is not an argument against outlawing abortion on demand.

I hope you can follow along, because this is interesting.

The study in question, authored by Gilda Sedghat at the Guttmacher Institute, (visit their site--I don't have to tell you where they stand on the abortion issue) makes the claim that abortion rates are dropping in countries where the procedure is legalized. It goes beyond its research to assert that the numbers are dropping because abortion is legal in those countries.

Below is their definition of an unsafe abortion. You will see that in nations with restrictive abortion laws every abortion is defined as unsafe. Naturally, then, they can say that restrictive abortion laws lead to unsafe abortions, because they have simply defined it that way.

"Abortions done either by people lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimum medical standards, or both. These include (a) abortions in countries where the law is restrictive and (b) abortions that do not meet legal requirements in countries where the law is not restrictive."

If you don't read anything else, I hope you read that paragraph!

The paragraphs in the block quotes below show that the researchers are using estimated data. A couple points about the data.

First, every time they can they estimate the number of abortions up. Sometimes this is done to an extraordinary degree: for example they estimate Bangladesh stats up by 300%. Because the nations with restrictive laws also tend not to collect abortion data, their estimates influence the statistics from those nations most. So regarding those places with restrictive abortion laws, the researchers have estimated the abortion rate up as high as they can.

They then say that the laws cause the high abortion rates, when it is more likely their estimation methods. One should note that the ideological tendencies of the researchers are obvious, so it is reasonable to doubt their estimations. If I was quoting from a report by LifeNews, pro-choicers would do the same.

"For two-thirds of countries for which official reports were available, and in which abortion is considered safe, the reports were deemed complete and the data were not adjusted. In the remaining countries, the average correction factor was 1•4 (which corresponds to an inflation of the official estimate by 40%). The correction factors ranged from 1•05 (USA) to 3•0 (Bangladesh).

In countries for which surveys showed more abortions than were counted in the official statistics, we deemed the survey estimates to be more complete, since even they are known to undercount abortions.

The findings presented here provide new estimates of abortion incidence at the worldwide and regional levels, which had not been updated since 1995. In the face of a dearth of information for many countries, particularly those in which abortion laws are highly restrictive, this study drew on all available sources of information and used systematic and consistent methods to estimate abortion incidence."

Beyond all this, they do not consider alternative variables. I am not a researcher, and I haven't taken stats, but my husband suggests that a solid research program would collect data on all variables likely to influence abortion rates (of which legality would be one variable. I can think of others). The researcher would then run some sort of statistical analysis to see which variables are statistically significant.

Have these researchers done the statistical analysis requried to make such a broad assumption? If not, even if we accept their numbers, we cannot, as a matter of social science, say that restrictive laws are causing a higher abortion rate. The researchers have assumed this without adequate proof.