November 18, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Department of Awful Statistics
There are a lot of awful statistics out there, but no place is such a gold mine as the Land of Abortion Figures.
Take the various people claiming that legalising abortion caused no increase in the number of abortions. This makes me suspicious; there are few activities for which demand is so inelastic that whether or not it is illegal makes no difference in whether people decide to do it. I went looking for the source of that assertion (which I made myself, many times, in the days of my pro-choice radicalism), and ultimately found that the source of that particular bad stat was a study which had estimated that the number of abortions in pre-Roe days was somewhere between 200,000 and 1.2 million per year. Some enterprising young pro-choicer took the upper bound of that study to claim that thus, the number of abortions hadn't increased--when the correct assessment would have been that the number of abortions has increased anywhere from slightly, to 700%, since Roe.
(To give the benefit of the doubt, it's more than possible that the statistic went through some intermediate stage, such as a writer claiming that "it seems very possible that abortion hasn't increased at all since Roe", with the people at each stage guilty only of standard moderate exaggeration, rather than outright lies.)
The problem, of course, is that there are no good numbers on how many abortions were had before Roe, since for some reason the illegal abortion providers were unwilling to provide the government with statistics. Add to this the fact that abortion is possibly the most political topic of our time, and that there is a lot more discretion on declaring causes of death when one of the factors is abortion than, say, when one of the factors is a flipped tanker truck full of nitroglycerine, and you'll see why there are so many awful numbers floating around.
Tom Maguire points out another one: the highly suspect allegation that the number of abortions has increased under Bush. Check it out.
Posted by Jane Galt at November 18, 2004 11:56 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksThe problem, of course, is that there are no good numbers on how many abortions were had before Roe, since for some reason the illegal abortion providers were unwilling to provide the government with statistics.
Not only that but I'm not aware that legal abortion providers are required to turn over any statistics to the gov't. At best we can only estimate the number of abortions by indirect methods such as surveys that ask women if they ever had an abortion (and how many if yes).
Nobody ever got a book published, or got their mug on cable t.v., or received tenure, by saying, "I really only have a very vague notion as to what possibly might be happening." Hence, a lot of pseudo-empirical yammering fills the silence.
As I wrote here, I don't think the abortion issue can be solved to everyone's satisfaction. The problem is too fuzzy (see the last paragraph).
When someone tells you that the estimated number of anything is between 200,000 and 1.2 million the translation is "I don't have a clue." Never accept a statistic that has such a wide variation. Also, always suspect any statistic that purports to count anything that is by its nature unknowable -- such as the number of illegal transactions that take place in secret to avoid detection.
This was a High School National Debate topic in the early 1960's, probably 1963 IIRC. The number that both pro- and anti- legalization teams rapidly converged on was ~500,000 .. ~1,000,000 a year. I don't remember what citations were used, any longer, but I do remember being surprized that the local hospital did almost a hundred D&Cs a year (served local population ~40,000.)
I dislike euphemisms as well as fuzzy statistics. Why is "abortion providers" considered superior to the older, more concise "abortionists" ?
When someone tells you that the estimated number of anything is between 200,000 and 1.2 million the translation is "I don't have a clue." Never accept a statistic that has such a wide variation.
Oh come on, next thing you know you’ll be telling us we shouldn’t accept exit polls at face value either ;)
If you will check, admittedly a long check and I've done a lot of reading on this subject over time, if you will check you will see that abortion has been with us since the time of the Greeks. In fact in every successful Western society it seems that the rich don't want a lot of kids spoiling their fun. The things done to abort a pregnancey in early Greece start with daily two mile runs and move forth from there. The stories in Rome always revolved around "who is the father" in the upper classes because honoring marriage vows was something "other people" did.
Stats will never measure anything. I suspect, without any facts to back me up, that 90% of the female news babes have had abortions and that these abortions were done so they could continue to earn more money. I know from being in show biz for twenty or so years that all actress unlucky enough to have a "preggy" aborted without a thought; the term used in my time was "flush it."
The excuses for abortion always say that the poor are the ones to benefit when in fact it is the poor who want to keep their children. This is always proven by the birth rate comparisons. I like to say that when middle class people lose their jobs they go shopping and when poor people lose theirs they go home and fuck.
I don't look for Roe to be overturned, ever. I do look for partial birth to end very quickly. Abortion will be with us forever.
Being against abortion leads one to a rather harsh fatalism for women.
Start out by being consistent. The fetus doesn't know or care who provided the sperm. It is hard to argue there should be rape exceptions.
All pregnancies are risky, some more so than others. Let's hear some reasonable discussion about at what point it is OK for the pregnant women to say "this risk is too high for me".
5% chance of death? 25%? 50%?
If you want to allow the woman to make her own determination about risk taking, then we are right back at freedom of choice.
From the Simpsons, the episode when Kang and Kodos replace CLinton and Dole and run for president:
Kang: Abortions for all. [crowd boos] Very well, no abortions for anyone. [crowd boos] Hmm... Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others. [crowd cheers and waves miniature flags]
"abortion provider" : a person or organization that may provide abortion services as one of a spectrum of services. "abortionist": a person or organization whose primary raison d' etre is the provision and execution of abortions. Or at least, that's the connotation involved.
"Abortionist" places primary significance on abortion as a facet of services. It would be like calling a CarX mechanic a "mufflerist" rather than a "muffler provider". I think a more appropriate term might be "mechanic", but in a debate about the right of mufflers to live until expelled from the automobile, some distinction must be made, I suppose.
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