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utsfl:classroom:seminars:pba330h [2016/12/01 19:41] – balleyne | utsfl:classroom:seminars:pba330h [2021/03/11 20:09] (current) – balleyne | ||
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- | ====== PBA330H: | + | ====== PBA330H: |
- | See [[wp>Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effects]]. | + | <note>This is based heavily on Section 9.5 of Christopher Kaczor' |
- | ===== The Argument ===== | + | Abortion advocates sometimes claim that " |
- | OITNB S03E01 conversation between Big Boo and Pensatucky to highlight how the argument | + | |
- | {{youtube> | + | The detailed answer is that advances in medicine and proper maternal healthcare are what make pregnancy safe, not abortion. This is a bit of a deep dive on the statistics and case studies so that we have the background to understand why abortion is not the answer to reducing maternal mortality. |
- | (lots of cursing) | + | |
- | See also [[wp> | + | FIXME this content is good, but it needs to be explained in a more accessible way, otherwise people get lost in the stats and don't get the bigger point. Some slides/ |
- | ===== The Response | + | ===== Illegal Abortions |
- | - First, being proactive: even //assuming// the Freakonomics thesis is 100% true, does reducing | + | A related argument is that abortion should be legal or ethically permitted in order to defend the health of women who might die from illegal abortions. |
- | | + | |
- | - FIXME Talia citation on actual Freakonomics | + | Dr. Bernard Nathanson((Kaczor, |
+ | > How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always "5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year." I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the " | ||
+ | |||
+ | | ||
+ | * e.g. National Center for Health Statistics reported 1231 abortion deaths in 1942 and 120 in 1972 | ||
+ | * Medical advances such as the use of sulfa, penicillin, and safer abortion techniques | ||
+ | * Legalization does not necessarily make abortion safe, as there are many examples of women who die from legal abortions((Kaczor, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===== The Maternal Mortality Myth ===== | ||
+ | |||
+ | * Dr. Byron Calhoun' | ||
+ | * Responds to the claim that "the risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than with abortion" | ||
+ | * Calhoun argues that there is no credible scientific evidence to support this claim | ||
+ | * For your own background information, | ||
+ | * Understanding the Maternal Mortality Rate: | ||
+ | * The maternal mortality rate is the number of deaths from pregnancy per 100,000 live births | ||
+ | * The number of deaths resulting from pregnancy is difficult to determine because there is lack of consensus regarding the time line | ||
+ | * Should a death within a month, six months, or a year after birth be attributed to pregnancy? | ||
+ | * The numerator of maternal deaths includes deaths from ectopic pregnancies, | ||
+ | * "40 percent of the deaths are never represented in the denominator, | ||
+ | * " | ||
+ | * Women who are aware they are pregnant "have already survived beyond the period of pregnancy' | ||
+ | * 19.7 cases per 1000 pregnancies in North America, and the leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester | ||
+ | * While these deaths are tragic, they are not relevant for the discussion of elective abortion - " | ||
+ | * Furthermore, | ||
+ | * Determining the risk of abortion cannot | ||
+ | * Lack of consensus on the time line | ||
+ | * e.g. What if an abortion causes a woman to have an ectopic pregnancy two years later? Her death would not be attributed to abortion, but to pregnancy! | ||
+ | * In order to know how dangerous abortion is, it is also necessary to know both how many abortions take place and the number of deaths and complications | ||
+ | * If either the numerator or the denominator of this ratio is unknown, it is impossible to determine the risk of death from abortion. | ||
+ | * If we cannot determine the risk of death from abortion, we cannot compare this risk to the risk of childbirth. | ||
+ | * Although we do have reliable statistics on maternal death from pregnancy, we do not have reliable statistics on maternal deaths from abortion((Kaczor, | ||
+ | * There is simply no uniform, mandatory, and consistent way of tracking deaths from abortion in the US, which relies on voluntary reporting methods when it comes both to the numbers of abortions and the numbers of maternal fatalities from abortion((Kaczor, | ||
+ | * (skip) NOTE: There' | ||
+ | |||
+ | **Conclusion / Broader Point:** We simply don' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Other problems: | ||
+ | * Calhoun notes that at least seven different definitions | ||
+ | as ectopic pregnancy)((For a woman contemplating the choice of elective abortions, the number of deaths from spontaneous abortions | ||
+ | * Many women sufferings from complications of abortion are treated by emergency room doctors who may not be made aware of the prior abortion. Deaths | ||
+ | * Another factor compounding the difficulty of finding reliable data is the impact of substance abuse, depression, and suicide resulting from abortion and leading to death. | ||
+ | |||
+ | > The claim that childbirth is more risky than abortion depends upon a comparison of two ratios: | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Case Studies ===== | ||
+ | > Is legalized abortion a boon for women’s health? One way to examine this question is to compare countries where abortion is legal to countries where it is not? | ||
+ | |||
+ | Based on study of 42 years of comparing England, Wales, Scotland, with Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, they found that the countries with legal abortion actually had //higher// maternal mortality rates. | ||
+ | |||
+ | > Calhoun concludes, “the legal status of abortion | ||
+ | |||
+ | We can see this pattern across several countries | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Chile ==== | ||
+ | Chile liberalized abortion laws in 1931 and then later banned virtually all abortions in 1989 (permitting abortion only to save the life of the mother, such as ectopic pregnancy). | ||
+ | |||
+ | * The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) dropped throughout the years from 1909 through 2009 | ||
+ | * During this 100 year span, abortion was decriminalized and then recriminalized | ||
+ | * When Chile liberalized abortion laws in 1931, there was no significant decrease in MMR | ||
+ | * the highest peak of the MMR occured in 1937. In fact, there' | ||
+ | | ||
+ | * After criminalization, | ||
+ | * The abortion mortality rate decreased over 96 percent after abortion banning in 1989 from 10.0 to 0.039 per 100,000 live births | ||
+ | |||
+ | Why is this? | ||
+ | |||
+ | > The factors that made the biggest difference in lowering maternal mortality per capita were clean water, increasing female education achievement, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Poland ==== | ||
+ | Poland had state funded abortion for decades and then criminalized most abortions after the 1989 Solidarity revolution of independence from communism. Poland provides a test case of how illegalization of almost all abortion and women’s health are related. | ||
+ | |||
+ | As of 2000: | ||
+ | > To everyone’s surprise, there have been 25% fewer miscarriages and 30% fewer women dying compared with what it had been while abortion was legal | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Guyana ==== | ||
+ | Examining the other side of the coin, the legalization of abortion in Guyana in 1995 did not reduce maternal mortality. Indeed, Koch notes, the maternal mortality ratio increased after legalization of abortion (Koch 2013, p. 159). What matters for improving women’s health, Koch argues, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Ireland ==== | ||
+ | * When abortion was illegal in Ireland, Ireland still had lower maternal morbidity rates than Scotland and England, where abortion was legal((Kaczor, | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Conclusion ===== | ||
+ | Very few women died from illegal abortion in the 1960s and early 1970s - before changes to the laws. In fact, a key argument in //Roe v. Wade// was that abortion | ||
+ | |||
+ | The legal status of abortion has no real connection with maternal mortality. Rather, it's proper medical care that changes the MMR, regardless of the legal status of abortion. Looking at proper examples like Chile, Ireland, Poland and Guyana provide the data needed to answer that question. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Abortion advocates often point to developing countries | ||
+ | |||
+ | It' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Let's look at [[https:// | ||
+ | * Canada: 10 (2017) | ||
+ | * United States: 19 (2017) | ||
+ | * Ireland: 5 (2017) | ||
+ | * Poland: 2 (2017) | ||
+ | |||
+ | FIXME dialogue example of comparing the US and Ireland before 2018. " | ||
+ | |||
+ | But, let's pretend abortion was safer than childbirth. | ||
+ | |||
+ | > The argument about the relationship between women’s health and abortion is an important one, but it is only one aspect of a larger conversation. Let’s suppose that giving birth were more risky for a woman’s health than getting an abortion. Let’s suppose that legalized abortion | ||
+ | |||
+ | The key to the response: | ||
+ | * Compare Canada/US to Ireland/ | ||
+ | * //Bring it back to the central question//: _Every_ successful abortion kills a human being. If we add the abortion deaths of the children who are killed by the abortion, it's clear that abortion | ||
+ | |||
+ | Bonus, information | ||
+ | * https://www.youtube.com/ | ||
+ | | ||
+ | * https:// |