Abortions and Public Health

Shut up about whether or not a fetus is a human you dweebs, we're talking SCIENCE and science gives no fucks.

Here's the article with the prelim findings: http://io9.com/5958187/what-happens...his-is-the-first-scientific-study-to-find-out

Here's the site: http://www.ansirh.org/research/turnaway.php

Presumably the study will appear there soon. If not I will use my lion like prowess to hunt it down and maul the individuals responsible for not doing the expected things.

Description of the project:

Here are the various results. I'm chopping away chunks because I assume you all have the attention span of mice and are incapable of clicking things that are blue and underlined. Can you blame me? You people spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about whether or not a fetus is a human! Also you might be at a workplace that bans science.

Poverty (note SAME INITIAL CONDITION):

Domestic Violence:

Depression and Emotional Damage:

Physical Health:

Keep in mind that this study is being conducted in a country (the US) where abortions are already legal and in many cases available for free, and where the mechanisms of government are reasonably well implemented and managed relative to non-OECD countries. In nations where neither of these elements exist the costs (emotional, physical and economic) are no doubt significantly higher. Advocating against abortion AS AN OPTION in those nations should be seen as advocacy for the greater evil.

Whatever your philosophical beliefs the public health implications are incredibly clear: women who want abortions and receive them are better off in virtually every way than women who do not, especially when the women in question exist in a state of poverty. Given that the women in this study are already productive (albeit under performing relative to the average for whatever reason) members of societies we should prefer to center our expenditure of scarce resources on their preservation in a healthy state rather than on necessarily risky investments in (unwanted) new life, especially when the odds of that new life outproducing the parents are incredibly low due to the incredibly strong relationship between parental and offspring earnings in the United States.

Barring the issuance of significant peer reviewed studies indicating otherwise we should be willing to allow abortions from a public health perspective.

Since you people are inevitably going to whinge about philosophy, here's the additional dealio: we should never terminate a life (however speculative) without the utmost respect for that life and without taking all other alternative options into consideration. While abortion should always be an option, the taking of a life should always be a weighty and difficult option (morally speaking, not from a procedural or bureaucratic standpoint of course. asking anyone to submit to a kafkaesque bureaucracy is inhumane). There is plenty of room to advocate in favor of abortion as an option for all women while arguing against it in specific instances for a specific woman. We should be careful not to confuse a desire to personally avoid the pain of abortion with a desire to avoid the certainty of greater harm for all by outlawing it for all.

Ok, so I guess we're done talking about abortions now. Who wants lunch? I've got Sloppy Joes!

Do you have any pizza rolls?

Let's not forget the worst-case scenario for when women are denied abortions.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/1114/1224326575203.html

Dang, and here I thought the worst case scenario was a Dire Vajazzle.

I'm going to a protest about this in about half an hour.

Sean Hannity's mother was denied an abortion.

Now we have Sean Hannity.

I'd like to think this is a lesson from which we can all learn.

98.9% of the time I'm proud to be Irish, but every now and then something utterly utterly awful and avoidable like this happens and I feel ashamed.

"We're a Catholic country" *reaches for "Kill Everything Forever" button*

Nice to see you staying classy as usual there. Wishing that ones political opponents were dead is something we should all aspire to.

Not dead, never born!

Joe Biden and I frequently discuss murdering our enemies while hanging out at cross burnings.

As the most popular poster on this site and one of history's greatest thinkers who can't use apostrophe's correct'ly I know you're all wondering about my position and honestly I can't see why abortion is still a thing. It's not like there are groups of people having abortions for fun, abortion is a serious matter and a serious issue that no one wants there to be more of and no one wants to have one and no one views abortion as a good thing (just, sometimes, a necessary thing).
Also thank you for the link Aeon.

What about those fat cats with Big Abortion? All they care about is their bottom line!

I had no idea that was a thing and now I have no doubt it actually is a thing and now I'm angry and hate the world a little more.

If it makes you feel any better I was joking. I once overheard a relative going on about how hospitals only support abortions because they're big money-makers. So hate the world less and hate the weirdos more.

You just don't understand - it's not your place to thwart God's fun at punishing slutty women with babies.

Because if the goal is to help these unwanted (generally poor) babies have fruitful happy lives once they're actually born, I'm not seeing that position reflected in any other policies from that political spectrum.

As someone who voted for Obama I demand a free shirt that says "I Thwarted God's Plan."

What can get you turned away for an abortion? Isn't it legal throughout the States?

There are all sorts of fun "we're going to stop just shy of making it illegal" things here in the states. Often there are limits on the "when," for various reasons and even if there's not a law about "when," there aren't actually huge numbers of doctors who will perform a late term abortion (there aren't actually that many doctors who even know how, last I've read). There's also shit like parental consent laws, which the girl can get around but it takes time and if it pushes her past the time where she can get an abortion easily well too fucking bad, etc.


(As for why women get them later rather than sooner, I think the most common answer was "I didn't actually know I was pregnant." Until we get to the REALLY late ones, then it was "because of medical shit.")

I see. That's quite different than it is in Canada, where there's no law on abortion. Period. The story of how that happened would actually make a great history channel movie, though I doubt it'll happen any time soon because of the controversial nature of it all. Dr. Morgentaler was only awarded the Order of Canada in 2008, which caused a minor hissy fit among some people.

In addition to what Sjofn says, "legal" is not the same thing as "available". There are a lot of places where health care providers just refuse to do them, not just late term, but any abortion at all. I can't find it now but somewhere out on the Intertubes there's a map that shades in all the areas within 100 miles of a place that will actually perform any abortion at all and there's a lot of rural/southern US areas that are not shaded in.

Holy shit yeah

I understand it involves balloons.

It's bad enough we've denied the death industry their death panels, now you want to deprive them of newborn flesh? How inconsiderate are you?

Not only did that person cause someone's death, they're also thick as shit because Ireland isn't a Catholic country, it's a secular country. But then again the person was Catholic so thick as shit should be taken for granted.


I went to the vigil in my city. It was really peaceful and calm. There was a weird moment for me when a motorbike that was parked nearby started up. There was a big enough engine on it and it roared to a start, but the owner obviously didn't rev it up or anything, you could just hear the rumbling of it ticking over. It drowned out all the sounds of the cars and street noises, and the place seemed even more calm and tense. Then he took off as quiet as he could. Really strange moment that for me anyway, it was something about how the sound isolated the place.

It was so sad though, respectful, sombre and sad. I could feel myself well up at a few points (especially seeing kids there.) It's awful that it's taking this to make the government even comment on this issue.

As with everything, there's a show about that: I Didn't Know I was Pregnant on TLC.

Everything about this particular line pisses me off.

Women getting poor because babies, because there's no post-natal care available and oh yes care and feeding. Poor babies growing up to be poor adults who have poor babies of their own because social mobility sucks. And I remember a study that said the causality goes the other way: poor women have babies because their prospects can't get any worse.

And a country where this could all be prevented if family planning and free contraceptives were a part of life.

Stupid lopsided idiot world. Pisses me off.

If abortions could result in Myrddraal I think we'd all be a hell of a lot more careful.

Hey, who let a women into our discussion on abortion??

We're a secular country that the Catholic Church has historically held a lot of sway over. Thankfully the Church's influence is declining rapidly, but there's still a lot of legacy bullshit, not the least of which is this retarded situation where the majority of the electorate has already voiced its opinion on medical terminations in two separate referenda, but our politicians don't want to touch the subject with a barge pole because they're afraid of the electorate.

Just a quick one on the "we're a Catholic country" bit - I'd be wary about saying that whoever made that comment caused someone's death since it is not clear at this stage who actually said it and in what context. I.e., it could have been a midwife, who wouldn't be in a position to do anything anyway, explaining why the ob-gyny's hands were tied.

Yeah, I'm still holding out hope that someone said it in resignation. As in saying, "We're a Catholic Country... Therefore my hands are tied because of fuckwit politicians."