Hillary Clinton rocks.
This seems like a good enough reason to repeat something I said in 2004:
The vast majority of unsafe abortion deaths take place in countries where pro-life forces have successfully restricted or outlawed abortion. Africa – which has by far the highest rate of unsafe abortion deaths – also has overwhelmingly pro-life laws. This is unsurprising; where abortion is illegal, women will seek abortions from people without medical training, and fear (or local laws) may keep them from seeking medical help if the unsafe abortion goes wrong.
The best cure for unsafe abortion is safe abortion – and that means legal abortion. What kind of a difference can legal abortion make? Here’s what happened in Romania when abortion was outlawed, in 1966 – and when it was legalized again, in 1989.
There’s a very clear relationship between legalized abortion and deaths from unsafe abortion.
There’s also no evidence that outlawing abortion reduces the number of abortions. From a WHO article on unsafe abortion:
Contrary to common belief, legalization of abortion does not necessarily increase abortion rates. The Netherlands, for example, has a non-restrictive abortion law, widely accessible contraceptives and free abortion services, and the lowest abortion rate in the world: 5.5 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age per year. Barbados, Canada, Tunisia and Turkey have all changed abortion laws to allow for greater access to legal abortion without increasing abortion rates.
There is no serious doubt that pro-life laws lead to increased death and injuries due to unsafe abortions. Furthermore, as the Netherlands show, it’s possible to have the world’s lowest rate of abortion by concentrating on reducing demand, rather than by threatening doctors and mothers with jail time. So if pro-lifers genuinely want to prevent abortion, why aren’t they demanding Netherlands-style programs?
There’s no reason the US couldn’t have an abortion rate as low as the Netherlands; it would just require the pro-lifers to quit trying to take away women’s freedom, and instead put their enormous energy and funds into reducing how likely women are to want abortion. In economic terms, the difference between a pro-lifer and a feminist who opposes abortion is that pro-lifers focus on reducing the supply of abortion by reducing freedom; feminists who oppose abortion would rather reduce the demand for abortion, by expanding women’s options. The feminist method is at least as effective for reducing abortion – and is far less deadly to women’s lives.
With Pro-Lifers, the issue is a lot more complicated than just wanting less or no abortions. When I talk to Pro-Lifers, they talk a lot about punishing women for having sexually free lives. As in, if a woman has sex, she deserves the burden of caring for a child. If she has a lot of sex, she deserves to have too many children to actually take care of. And, if she has sex while unmarried, she deserves to have her man leave her to take care of the baby alone.
I talked to a man I used to be friends with in high school and presented the medical safety argument, and he argued that access to abortions leads to using abortions primarily as birth control, and that all these single women right now are going out, having sex, getting pregnant, and having an abortion. When I pointed out that condoms and the pill are much cheaper than abortions, he scoffed at me. He also said that abortion doctors deserved to die because they were baby killers and that abortions should be provided when medically necessary, but that abortion doctors would still deserve to die even in medical circumstances.
It is naive to think that a logical defense of abortion would work in combating Pro-Life arguments, because most Pro-Life activists aren’t coming at the issue from a logical perspective.
Why is abortion something we should reduce?
Why is abortion something we should reduce?
Because prevention is better than cure and we have a number of very good methods available for preventing unwanted pregnancy. The abortion rate should never (barring unexpected changes in technology) go to zero however: abortion is still and likely always will be the safest way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. The bolding is there to emphasize that not all unplanned pregnancies are unwanted and one should be careful of the distinction.
I’m not disagreeing that legalisation is correct, but I think it may be hasty to conclude that it will produce as ideal or as similar a result as in Netherlands. I don’t think it’s purely the pro-lifers’ rallying that is holding the US back from achieving rates like the Netherlands. This is because the demographics differ fundamentally. It’s too simplistic to think that just because the Dutch can do it, US can.
Netherlands has an ageing population, so the group of young, working adults that procreate or abort is already significantly smaller than the US, which has a huge immigrant population of the young and fertile. More fertile immigrants come in every day in large numbers, that could mean that abortion rates are not significantly reduced. So legalising abortion in the US may not produce as low an abortion rate as the Netherlands, because in absolute numbers there’s already a huge disparity.
Furthermore, the average Dutch woman who goes for abortion is likely to have a higher socioeconomic status than the average American woman who does. This is because the American woman is likely to be from a socio-economically disadvantaged background due to the huge income disparities. The highest percentage of abortions are from women below 25 and are POC. This would mean that legalising abortion in the US would not solve fundamental problems of social inequality and risk, so abortion rates may not be (significantly) reduced.
Dutch results cannot be duplicated by legalisation. What can produce Dutch results is a full set of socially progressive laws that empower everybody (not just the poor), so younger women use protection and have sex when they are older, so streets are safer and less women are raped. Not only that, laws that reduce the risk for racial groups and the poorer groups that live in places of disamenity, with little access to good healthcare and employment, also increase the possibility of lowering abortion rates.
Wendy has a good point; many consider pregnancy a (rightful) punishment for promiscuity. Ironic when so many anti abortion advocates proclaim what gifts from god children are. Considering the contradictions in argument, its unlikely then that reason or supportable statistics are going to sway many of the foes of choice.
Why are appendectomies something we should reduce?
Kip – as far as I know, they aren’t. Appendectomies save lives, net and gross; hardly anyone dies from an appendectomy and lots of people are saved. Abortion definitely saves some lives, but at the obvious cost of other lives.
Dianne – that’s a good explanation of why we should have more birth control as a substitute for abortion. It isn’t an explanation of why abortion is something we should have less of.
If abortion is a good thing, then saying we should have less of it is nonsensical. If it is a bad thing, then saying we should have less of it would make sense. Amp is (implicitly) saying it’s a bad thing; I’m asking what’s bad about it.
Wrong, dumbass. Amp is saying that sick-fuck right-wing woman-hating assholes claim (1) that abortion is a bad thing, (2) that it is, therefore, a good thing to reduce its frequency, and (3) that it should, thus, be outlawed.
This is the context in which Amp points out that there is no evidence that outlawing abortion reduces its frequency and asserts that, therefore, honest “right-to-lifers” who claim that their goal is to reduce its frequency should not be advocating it being outlawed. Others then correctly pointed out that the reason “right-to-lifers” continue to push for abortion bans is that they lie when they claim that their goal is to reduce its frequency; their real goal is to punish women for fucking.
Try to keep your eye on the fucking ball, holmes.
Of course appendectomies are something we should reduce. Appendectomies, like abortions are medical procedures, and as such carry a certain degree of risk. If there’s another way to get to the same place without that risk, we ought to do it.
There is nothing inherently good or bad about either abortions or appendectomies … they are both means to an end, and as such are good inasmuch as they reach that end and are bad inasmuch as they carry risk. This isn’t hard to understand.
There are those who do believe that abortion is ‘bad’. For some reason they consistently pursue policies which increase the number of abortions. This is pretty fucking stupid of them. That also isn’t hard to understand.
—Myca
Robert
The good thing in question here is birth control on the woman’s part.
There are different ways of achieving birth control: sexual abstinence, various contraceptive techniques, abortion. What is unreasonable in the belief that of those methods abortion is the worst (in terms of the woman’s health, of her psychological well-being and even of her social standing in some instances) and that it would be far better for her if birth control could be brought about by one of the other methods? That is a correct belief, isn’t it? – and in no way implies (is this, perhaps, what you were getting at?) that a desire to bring down the rate of abortion is a tacit admission that the unborn offspring of human beings ought to enjoy from the moment of their conception the right to life we accord to fully formed ones.
Appendectomies save lives, net and gross; hardly anyone dies from an appendectomy and lots of people are saved.
Actually, the case fatality rate for appendectomy is around 0.3 per 1000, far higher than the less than 1 in 100,000 for legal abortion. Most of the deaths are due to appendicitis rather than the procedure, but I could give some utterly disgusting anecdotes of surgery gone bad if you have any doubts.
But leaving aside the deaths of the “mothers”, what about the poor little appendix cells that are being killed just because they’re sick? In principle, any non-terminally differentiated cell (and possibly simply any cell) could be used for reproductive cloning. So if I had to have an appendectomy some time should I mourn my several million potential twins?
It isn’t an explanation of why abortion is something we should have less of.
Ok, how about this explanation…we should have fewer abortions because abortion is surgery and
surgeons are overpaid.More seriously, because surgery can have complications, even if those complications are fairly rare in legal abortion, and there are perfectly good preventative measures available. We should also have fewer liver transplants: alcohol reduction and vaccination for hepatitis B (and maybe someday for C as well) should make fewer liver transplants necessary. But that doesn’t mean that people who do need abortions or liver transplants shouldn’t get them. Neither is intrinsically bad.I do think we’d be better off as a society if there were fewer abortions, for the reasons that several people here have expressed, but Myca in comment #9 most closely expressed my views.
(I’d also add that abortion is an exceptionally expensive method of birth control, compared to other, less invasive methods. Less expensive, all else held equal, is better.)
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Comrade PhysioProf, there’s a certain level of civility asked of folks who post comments on this blog, which your comment didn’t meet.
I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with how you express yourself; there’s actually a lot to be said for being honestly pissed off, and for cussing people out. I totally respect that. And there are plenty of great feminist blogs where comments like that are totally welcome.
This one particular blog, however, is trying to do something else. Please respect that. Thanks!
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Dianne, thank you for a lot of great comments on this thread.
No problem! Your blog; your rules. Just so I understand your take on civility: is it the colorful language that is the problem, or the calling another commenter a dumbass?
Good question!
I think colorful language is abso-fucking-lutley great.
It’s the over-the-top insulting tone, both in calling another commenter a dumbass, and in “try to keep your eye on the fucking ball, holmes,” that doesn’t fit in here.
I defy any ignorant religious woman-hating schite-headed twit to show me three woman who say they use abortion as birth control when any other method is available????
They all love to state that but none has ever shown even one.
So put you proof forward give three names that con be contacted for physical verification at their doctors place. Ya I know you’re religious so are very moral and would never lie or make stuff up…..ya sure.
Give all the right to get birth control-drugs, condoms, whatever-and abortions will drop to near nothing. But then women would have freedom and you schite-brained morons cant have that.
R, this isn’t a comment on your entire statement, but on the second paragraph:
Because the rates on the graph are percentages per women of reproductive age, the age demographics differences are moot, though the income disparity demographics you also cite may be relevant.
Rosa – you are right there, I was just trying to frame the numbers by showing the difference in absolute numbers of population growth. Since the US has more immigrants that are likely to boost the birth rate with their large numbers of growth, the inbuilt momentum for birth rates and thus abortion rates would be higher, and thus require already more efforts than a Dutch solution.
R: According to this site the immigration rate in the Netherlands and the US aren’t all that different. The US is #31, the Netherlands #36. I don’t think that immigration alone can account for the differences. Different social attitudes, better social safety net, and better sex ed, possibly, but not immigration per se.
In my human sexuality class in college, we read several studies that showed that countries where abortions were legal had lower rates of abortion than countires where it was not. And then there were studies that showed that the best way to reduce abortions were good comprehensive sex education and easy acesss to contraceptives.
Sex education is annother hotly debated topic in America. I’ve heard all manners of craziness coming from well intentioned parents and educations who believe that abstinence is the best solution yet studies show that abstinence education serves mostly as a delaying tactic and that teens who received abstinence education are less likely to use contraceptives, becuase a) they are igorant about how contraceptives work and b) they are too ashamed/embarasssed.
Anyway, Hilary Clinton did a great job of reframing the debate into seing the forrest for the trees, something that doesn’t always happen in the abortion debate. I’m sure youtube comments are a stew of foolishness.
Wow. That woman has got a SPINE. She’d make a great President, doncha think?
Tom Nolan writes:
I like Tom’s classification system . . . because it makes it clearer that the “Pro-life” movement must be a marriage-of-convenience of people who think that A and B are OK but abortion is the real sin, joined politically with people who think that option A is the only acceptable form of birth control (the “just keep your legs crossed” crowd).
I wonder how well that confederation holds together. I’d bet our Senator from NJ in the vid above is from the latter camp . . .
I consider myself a pro-choicer, though it took me quite a while to come around to this viewpoint, having been raised staunchly Catholic. (Though I’m now an atheist, not that the two issues are necessarily related.)
I don’t have a problem with the concept that the right to an abortion is a good thing. And I can acknowledge that there may be individual instances where a specific abortion is a good thing. But I have trouble seeing how, in general, abortion is a good thing. I think you can make a case that it’s “neutral,” and you can make a case that it’s “not a bad thing,” but I think it requires a bit of tortured logic to assert that the act of terminating a pregnancy is a net positive.
Many, if not most, pro-lifers contend that a developing embryo or fetus is exactly or essentially equal to a human being. It may be convenient to make a direct counter-argument that the embryo/fetus is not only not a human being, but is essentially nothing. But I don’t think, logically, one is required to believe that an embryo/fetus is completely without value in order to be pro-choice. It is possible to believe that it is less than a baby but more than a fingernail.
To understand a question like this, I think you have to put yourself in what would be a similar situation if you took pro-lifers at their word.
So, first, a disclaimer: I acknowledge that the actions of many pro-lifers indicate that they don’t really view fetuses as equal to human beings, and they don’t actually treat abortion as equal to infant-killing. But a lot of them say they do.
So to understand the mindset, you have to consider how you would react if legalizing something that you felt was categorically wrong would reduce its occurrence. Rape is a good example, because it’s easy to make a case that it is never situational: rape is always wrong.
Thus, if evidence existed that making rape legal would result in fewer rapes, would you support said legalization?
Phil, I think you misunderstand what is meant by “Netherlands-style programs,” which is that sex education is thorough, contraception freely and easily available, and social welfare programs generous, as well as abortion being safe and easily accessible.
That’s a good point, PG–I did interpret that too narrowly. I think my general point still stands; I don’t think that Ampersand was advocating for a progressive sex-education and contraceptive policy which might coincide with a ban on legal abortions.
I’m honestly not sure what I would advocate if I honestly believed that evidence showed that legalizing something horrific, along with a series of social programs, would reduce its occurrence.
I don’t think that Ampersand was advocating for a progressive sex-education and contraceptive policy which might coincide with a ban on legal abortions.
No, but Amp also wasn’t arguing that it’s the legality of abortion that in itself would reduce the number of abortions (though it does reduce the number of women killed and maimed by unsafe, non-medical, illegal abortions).
I don’t think there can be much evidence that something that is legal will be less common — there are always people who will avoid doing something if it is illegal, so long as there is any enforcement and consequences to getting caught at all. I refuse to do drugs anywhere they are not legal, even though the likelihood that I’d get caught if I just had a drag off a friend’s joint is miniscule.
But the pro-life movement is hostile toward comprehensive sex education and contraception, which reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus the number of abortions.
I’m late to the party, but I’d like to point out that I think culture is an important factor too. In the Netherlands we (except for the very religious area’s) expect teenagers to have sex, so we prepare them for it. By extensive sex-ed, but also because having sexual relationships is something that most people talk about with their kids at home. Which makes it less of an exiting secret thing and more something that you have to decide about yourself. With all that open talk and extensive sex-ed and government campaigns about how dumb it is not to have a condom available the average age of having sex for the first time is more or less the same (or even slightly higher) than in the States.
In addition I’d like to say that I was flabbergasted to learn that 49% of all pregnancies in the US was unplanned (indeed, not the same as unwelcome). I think that is HUGH. It happends here too, but definately not even close to that percentage.
Dutchmarbel, I too like the healthy emphasis on education provided in many European countries. It might surprise many people to know that many Christians, even fundamentalist ones, have fairly healthy attitudes towards sex and sexuality, and do educate their children quietly but honestly about sexual matters. These people (and people like me – I’m not a fundamentalist but I am a Christian) would like very much to have the good outcomes in terms of low teen pregnancy rates and low abortion rates, without what we perceive as the bad outcomes in terms of high unwed pregnancy rates and a sexually permissive culture.
Except, Robert, Canada and Germany both have much lower rates of abortion and teenage pregnancy than the US — and they have lower unwed pregnancy rates than the US, as well. The Netherlands has lower abortion and teenage pregnancy rates, but their unwed pregnancy rate is about the same as the US’s. Denmark’s unwed preggers rate is only a little higher than the US’s.
In short, a better culture for preventing unwanted teenage pregnancy doesn’t inevitably leads to higher rates of nonmarital childbirth.
Also, if right-wingers really believe that abortion isn’t distinct from baby murder, then it seems ridiculous to oppose measures that might eventually lead to hundreds of thousands fewer baby murders a year, in order to prevent a hypothetical increase in unwed childbirth and “permissive” (oh, gasp! horrors!) sexual attitudes.
(Stats from here and here.)
Robert: here’s a study that looked at correlations between religiosity and a range of social ills in 17 different first-world countries. If you scroll to the middle of the page and look at figures 8 and 9, you can see that both high teenage pregnancy rates and high teenage abortion rates strongly correlate with an absolute belief in God and with regular attendance at religious services.
You can make of that what you will, but personally? I don’t think it indicates that Christian parenting is effective in reducing the teen pregnancy rate.
Also, if right-wingers really believe that abortion isn’t distinct from baby murder, then it seems ridiculous to oppose measures that might eventually lead to hundreds of thousands fewer baby murders a year, in order to prevent a hypothetical increase in unwed childbirth and “permissive” (oh, gasp! horrors!) sexual attitudes.
Similarly, if left-wingers really believe that full employment is a good goal, then it seems ridiculous to oppose measures (like free trade policies and punitively inadequate welfare provisions) that might eventually lead to hundreds of thousands more jobs, in order to prevent a hypothetical increase in economic inequality and individualistic economic attitudes.
In other words, the “might” and “hypothetical” clauses in your equation are going to vary mightily in their valuation, depending on the assumptions and baseline values of the person running the mental calculus. Just as you judge that it wouldn’t be worth saving some jobs (according to MY theories) by doing something you’d find objectionable, we feel the same way.
To put it still another way, if (God forbid) anti-abortion people started killing abortion providers – I mean mass blood in the streets, not just the tragic individual crimes we’ve seen to date – that would surely have a huge impact on the number of abortions performed in the US. Yet, there is little sentiment for doing that (thank God) – it would be too much of a violation of foundational values, even for the people who rationally assess that a bloodbath would save more lives in the long run. Personally, I think abortion is murder; I think if the mob slaughtered all the abortion doctors, there would be way less abortion; I think a mass slaughter of all the abortion doctors would be a heinous crime and could not be justified by the lives it “might” save.
Even an objective promise of better outcomes is not always going to be enough to overcome reluctance to endorse certain courses of action; when the plausibility of the promise is instead highly conditioned on one’s values, it will not be surprising that people with different values than us will come to different conclusions off the same data.
Amp et al: The world has tested this pretty thoroughly, and the evidence says these policies that Robert claims to support would do more to reduce abortion than trying to outlaw it (which seems doomed from a black-and-white perspective, though the piecemeal approach can and has hurt people).
Robert: BLOOD MURDER (oh, but hardly anyone wants to do that on a larger scale than what we’ve seen so far) and also I love getting root canals.
Now of course, the post does present a dichotomy between banning abortion and reducing it. I don’t know of any country offhand that has both prohibition and otherwise rational policies about contraceptives. But hey, maybe you can combine anti-abortion-rights activism with an effective push for, well, effective policies.
To put it still another way, if (God forbid) anti-abortion people started killing abortion providers – I mean mass blood in the streets, not just the tragic individual crimes we’ve seen to date – that would surely have a huge impact on the number of abortions performed in the US.
A well organized terrorist campaign extending over decades is not a series of “individual crimes”.
To put it still another way, if (God forbid) anti-abortion people started killing abortion providers – I mean mass blood in the streets, not just the tragic individual crimes we’ve seen to date – that would surely have a huge impact on the number of abortions performed in the US.
“Mass blood in the streets”? How many publicly-acknowledged abortion providers do you think there are in the U.S. — particularly, in the areas where people are most likely to want to kill them? 98% of U.S. counties have no acknowledged abortion provider in their borders.
(“Acknowledged abortion provider” = someone who will be in the Yellow Pages as an abortion provider. Supposedly some ob-gyns will provide abortions for their patients or those who are referred from a trusted colleague, but will not publicize the fact precisely because they don’t want to be a target.)
Guttmacher says there were 1787 abortion providers in 2005. Assuming that the typical provider is one doctor and a couple of nurses, which seems reasonable, there are at least 5,000 people who would qualify. (Guttmacher also notes that the no-in-county-provider figure is 87%, not 98%, and that the women without in-county access amount to 35% of the US female population.)
The deaths of 5,000 people by mob action would show up, I should think, even if Dianne thinks it would be a small upward blip in a multidecade reign of terror.
All of which spectacularly misses the point, of course, which is that “action [X] would fix a problem” is not sufficient justification for action [X].
Well, actually, there’s another part of that, isn’t there?
The only reason action [X] is insufficiently justified is that it has consequence [Y] attached, which is as bad or worse than the original problem.
Now, if X = the murder of thousands of babies and Y = the murder of thousands of adults, thn yes, I see your point.
But that’s not the case.
The issue Amp was discussing was one in which X = the murder of thousands of babies, and Y = the possibility of slightly more premarital sex and a slightly more permissive sexual attitude.
The fact that you (and other like you) consider Y an unacceptable cost to pay for X is deeply disturbing. I mean, just: Wow, that’s fucked up.
—Myca
Abortion is the murder of thousands of babies? I don’t think you believe that. And if you don’t believe that – if your assignation of value to a term in the equation is radically different than mine – then why would I believe your calculation of costs and benefits, either?
Robert, I think you’re misunderstanding the point, which is that Myca is trying to value aborted fetuses as you do — as “murdered babies” — and point out that under your claimed valuing, you’re putting a higher priority on avoiding a more sexually-permissive culture than on avoiding that murder.
PG (of course) got it in one.
—Myca
The deaths of 5,000 people by mob action would show up, I should think, even if Dianne thinks it would be a small upward blip in a multidecade reign of terror.
About 3000 people died in the 9/11 WTC attacks. A much larger number than the number that died in the WTC attack that occurred in the 1990s. Does that mean that al Qaeda only became a “real” terrorist organization in 2001 (at least in the US) because they’d only killed a few people before that? The intent of a certain wing* of the “pro-life” movement is to cause terror in order to discourage doctors and NPs from providing abortion services. They’ve tried, with fortunately little success, to kill numerous providers over the years. How can this not be a terrorist campaign, even if not the most efficient possible one?
*Just to make clear, I do not hold all pro-lifers responsible for these lunatics any more than I hold all Muslims responsible for al Qaeda.
Dianne,
At least among pro-lifers who refer to abortion as murder, it seems to be more justifiable to say their rhetoric sparks terrorism than it does to say that the average Muslim has views that could rationally lead to Al Qaeda terrorism. If AQ were going around forcing people to convert to Islam, that might arguably be something logically connected to the faith (since the Quran has some fierce language about unbelievers), but that’s not what they’re actually doing.
In contrast, the rhetoric of abortion-is-murder inherently deems abortion providers to be murderers who are out of reach of the law. Not only have providers murdered before, they will murder again, and again, until they are stopped. Thankfully, the majority of people who spout the rhetoric don’t advocate stopping this “genocide” by killing the providers, but other tactics such as harassment, stalking, pressuring other businesses not to provide unrelated services to anyone who works at a clinic, etc. are all well within the mainstream of the movement.
It is frankly puzzling to me that someone who thinks an abortion provider is committing genocide every day doesn’t think that it’s worthwhile to kill that provider in order to help prevent the genocide and in defense of the helpless unborn. Do these folks also think it would have been wrong to kill other people who committed mass murders under a pretense of legality (as with Stalin, Mao et al.)?