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.