Pharyngula

Pharyngula has moved to http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

Monday, January 09, 2006

The red is for blood

Give Up Blog has a map of abortion possibilities—the states likely to restrict abortion if Roe v. Wade is undermined, as estimated by the Guttmacher Institute.

image

That's disturbing. The South and the middle of the country would throw away an essential clinical service that many women depend on at some point in their life, as you can see from this overview.

  • Half of all pregnancies to American women are unintended; half of these end in abortion.
  • In 2002, 1.29 million abortions occurred.
  • At current rates, about one in three American women will have had an abortion by the time she reaches age 45.
  • 88% of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
  • A broad cross section of U.S. women have abortions.
    • 56% of women having abortions are in their 20s;
    • 61% have one or more children;
    • 67% have never married;
    • 57% are economically disadvantaged;
    • 88% live in a metropolitan area; and
    • 78% report a religious affiliation.

Legal restrictions won't change those numbers, except perhaps in one way: more women will die or be rendered sterile by botched illegal abortions, so there will be fewer repeated abortions. I guess if that's what you want, it makes sense to legislate greater risk for women…but I would hope a majority would not want that. I fear that most vote for restrictions based on short-sighted priggishness, with no thought for the consequences.

I'm also looking at that strange island of Minnesota, surrounded by a sea of red and pink. I suspect that there are many hypocrites in the Dakotas and Iowa and Wisconsin who would willingly legislate the morality of the poor underclass of their state, knowing full well that if their daughters have a little 'accident', they can just slip across the state line for a weekend in Minneapolis—and maybe catch a little casino action in Mille Lacs after the procedure.


Trackback url: http://tangledbank.net/index/trackback/3694/

Comments:
#57034: — 01/09  at  09:51 AM
I can't imagine what possessed them to put Ohio in the "most likely to protect abortion" category. Outside the (struggling) major cities this state is dominated by reactionary mouthbreathers, and currently has not a single Democratic statewide officeholder. GiveUpBlog must know something I don't. I sure hope so.



#57037: — 01/09  at  09:58 AM
I'm extremely disappointed to see that my home state of Michigan is apparently in the reactionary mouthbreathers camp. It always seemed like a pretty reasonable state, but I guess things may have changed since I left.



's avatar #57040: PZ Myers — 01/09  at  10:07 AM
Give Up Blog also has some reservations about the data, so don't blame them.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris



#57042: aa — 01/09  at  10:13 AM
PZ, when you wrote "I suspect that there are many hypocrites in the Dakotas and Iowa and Wisconsin who would willingly legislate the morality of the poor underclass of their state, knowing full well that if their daughters have a little 'accident', they can just slip across the state line for a weekend in Minneapolis" it reminded me of Dan Barker's book "losing Faith in Faith: from Preacher to Atheist"

On page 210 he writes the of the following exchange:

"I was talking with a Catholic attorney recently who said "Dan, this abortion issue is so emotional that no one is ever going to change their mind"
"I did" I answered
"Well, I was raised to respect the sanctity of life" he said "And I will always vote with my church"
"And that's why I changed my mind - I respect the sanctity of the woman's life"
He looked at me for a moment, and in hushed tones said "Butyou know what? I don't know what I would do if my fourteen-year-old daughter got pregnant"
"You would get her a quick, quiet abortion and worry about the morality later" I offered. With a guilty grin, he nodded his head in agreement. "You have the money and you have the contacts" I continued "but if you keep voting wrong you may not have the option." He didn't know what to say, the big hypocrite."

The entire book is well worth a read.



#57045: — 01/09  at  10:41 AM
I'm so happy to see Dan Barker's wonderful book receive a mention here! Always remember, the abortion 'controversy' is not about the babies, it's about the women. If it were about the babies, those against abortion would offer full sexuality education and access to effective contraceptives for those who need them. Banning abortion instead of preventing it is merely punishing women for being sexual creatures. PZ, your consistent efforts to enlighten people away from religion is the most effective tool we have! Thanks!



#57046: — 01/09  at  10:42 AM
Wow, Tennessee is on the good side for a change. Wonder how that happened?



#57047: James Nicoll — 01/09  at  10:48 AM
I have the most remarkable coincidence to report. This is a map of the incidence of chlamydia by state:



And this is a map of the incidence of gonorrhea by state:



What are the odds that STDs could be used to predict whether or not a state was anti-choice?

Due diligence: the US syphilis map looks like this:



and doesn't seem that useful in this context. I have to say that I'd think very hard about sleeping with someone from either Texas or Louisiana, though.



#57055: — 01/09  at  11:33 AM
"Half of all pregnancies to American women are unintended"

Half? Is birth control really that unreliable/unavailable? Are people making stupid decisions?



#57057: — 01/09  at  11:41 AM
Half the population has below average intelligence and smart people do dumb things (smart and stupid being merely a difference in relative frequency).



#57058: paperwight — 01/09  at  11:48 AM
Half? Is birth control really that unreliable/unavailable? Are people making stupid decisions?

I'm not going to bag on J for his/her/its lack of empathy here. I'm just going to list some factors in no particular order:

- aggressively know-nothing fundamentalist attitudes toward sex in much of the country

- little if any useful sex education in much of the country (see first item)

- lack of easy availability of birth control in many small towns (especially for women), due often to social pressure

- rape

- alcohol or other drugs as a way of life for bored young people in a lot of small towns

- occasional birth-control failures

And remember, the statistic is half of all pregnancies, not half of all intercourse resulting in pregnancies. Each of the factors I mention above tend to increase the likelihood of pregnancy when there is intercourse, and that pregnancy is likely to be unintended, if not ultimately unwanted. The actual number of people in the country who are actively seeking to be pregnant is a much smaller number than the number of people having sex. So the statistics are going to bear that out.



#57059: — 01/09  at  11:49 AM
No idea how much credence to give to "Half of all pregnancies to American women are unintended", but just want to point out that not all abortions result from unintended pregnancies. Some are carried out when wanted pregnancies turn out to have problems; other pregnancies are wanted to begin with but become unsustainable (because of, e.g., changes in financial/domestic circumstances or risks to health).



#57060: — 01/09  at  11:53 AM
(Sorry, reading that back it looks like I'm saying the same thing twice. What I meant was to distinguish between terminations carried out because the fetus becomes unviable and those prompted by a change in other circumstances.)



#57061: James Nicoll — 01/09  at  11:59 AM
"Half of all pregnancies to American women are unintended"

"Half? Is birth control really that unreliable/unavailable? Are people making stupid decisions??"

Unintended may not be the same as undesired: I know of a number of married couples who did not plan the timing of their kids [1].

Also, it seems to me the worse the sex-ed a person gets (whether from school or at home), the less able they are to make informed decisions about fertility. Sure, those condoms may be available at the local drugstore but if someone has been told that they don't work, why would they use them? Or if they've been raised to think that sex should be a spontaneous act of affection, thinking ahead to have birth control handy may seem too cold blooded.

1: In one case, I commited a social transgression when I noticed all their kids were born at the same time of year, and counted back nine months to see why then, particularly.



#57062: — 01/09  at  12:02 PM
This map simply needs more categories. Illinois and Indiana are nowhere close on the abortion issue. And Tennessee as white? That's highly suspect.

Why does My Old Kentucky Home fail me on nearly every social issue? It really is a wonderful place...if only we could make education as popular as NASCAR and basketball.

Heh. My submit word is zygote.



#57063: Kristine Harley — 01/09  at  12:15 PM
"Half of all pregnancies to American women are unintended."

Isn't it also the case that 40-50% of all pregnancies, whether intended or not, end in "spontaneous abortion," i.e. miscarriage? So how come the Intelligent Designer gets to perform abortions? El Gordo nailed it--the abortion controvery is not about babies, it's about women. After all, one of the most popular anti-abortion slogans that I hear are "Why do you baby killers want to be men?" Uh--do men have abortions, perchance? No, but men make the majority of life-and-death decisions--and the ultimate goal, in my opinion, of the anti-choice camp is not to ban all abortions, but to force particular people that they don't like to have them.



#57064: JMJanssen — 01/09  at  12:18 PM
That island in the midwest is the reason why we need to make sure our state is well-funded and the growing conservative demographic doesn't ruin what we have going. This will be nothing new to us, we've taken plenty of impoverished from neighboring states, now it will be those who wish to have a safe and legal abortion.

I know it costs the residents of this state, and I'm not going to get into the debate of whether these decisions are right or wrong. I just hope that we continue to be an example of social altruism for the rest of the region.



#57066: — 01/09  at  12:19 PM
i might be of here, but isn't the taboo on pre-marital sex also problem? it leads to a lot of pent up desire, which makes release under relaxing conditions (i.e. drinking, which is also repressed. lovely loop) that much more likely. especially when profilactics are hard to get, or unfamiliar (poor sex-ed).



#57068: decrepitoldfool — 01/09  at  12:25 PM
There is a functional paradox in that women who are expecting to have sex and assent to the necessary precautions are far less likely to have unintended consequences than women who engage in dating with mixed thoughts and emotions about sex.

It shows up clearly in the statistics about absinence-only sex education



#57070: — 01/09  at  12:39 PM
I fear that most vote for restrictions based on short-sighted priggishness, with no thought for the consequences.

I've always been and still am a staunch supporter of a woman's right to choose, and I believe that right should be as unencumbered as possible by any restrictions. Still, it gives me pause to read such dismissive and insulting commentary, even from people who apparently hold a similar position on the issue as I do. There are, I'm sure, anti-abortion types who fit your description, but I think there are many more who are genuinely troubled by the ethical or moral questions posed by willfully destroying something that will become a human life. One need not be a fundamentalist or even particularly religious to regard an embryo as an entity deserving of some kind of legal protections. The real questions for most people involve where to draw the line that balances a would-be mother's right to self-determination with the right of the child-to-be. I hardly would call that short-sighted or priggish and it most certainly is giving thought to the consequences. That you could be so callous in your disregard for people who find themselves struggling with these questions says more about your lack of consideration of these issues than it does about the varied attitudes and opinions about people who would restrict abortion more that I would like to see it restricted.



#57071: Andy — 01/09  at  12:55 PM
What's happened to the Land of the Free? These hypocrites are destroying America, the stronghold of freedom and democracy. And they're taking away the rest of the western world with them.



#57073: — 01/09  at  01:07 PM
I think it's interesting the people who would shoot a juvenile delinquent in “self-defense” for breaking and entering are usually the same ones that call abortion murder. In the first instance someone’s shot because he broke into your home intending to deprive you of a TV set or whatever. That’s self-defense. I wouldn’t want to be the only liberal in Buttfuckville, Texas to defend the right to life of the little miscreant who’s going to hell because in the Bible it says thou shalt not steal. And anyway shooting him is a Constitutional right under the Second Amendment blah blah blah. In the second instance, someone -- a barely differentiated blob of cells, to be exact -- dies so the mother might not be deprived of an education, career, & etc. -- basically the next twenty years of her life. That’s murder.

See how that works? TV, good; life, bad.

Bottom line: I don’t want my tax dollars supporting some slut who had sex out of wedlock and it serves her right she has to raise a child in poverty and if it turns to drugs and becomes a juvenile delinquent that we shoot in the back for breaking into our homes to steal our TV sets to sell to homosexualists to get money to buy drugs, well that’s what Jesus would do.



#57075: — 01/09  at  01:33 PM
Isn't it also the case that 40-50% of all pregnancies, whether intended or not, end in "spontaneous abortion," i.e. miscarriage?


Actually, I think it's a bit more than that. The number I've heard is 50-70%. And therein lies a little problem for the self-proclaimed pro-lifers. If they really believed every conceptus was a person, fully equal to any adult in every way, then why aren't they agitating for increased funding into the causes of spontaneous abortion? If up to 70% of newborns died on their first day of life, I would expect there to be a huge outcry demanding research on this problem in order to end the pandemic as quickly as possible. So, why are the pro-lifers not demanding that the causes of spontaneous abortion be examined and that pandemic ended? The two possible (non-exclusive) reasons I can think of are 1. They don't know enough biology to know that this problem exists. In which case, why are we paying any attention to their ramblings on a subject they know nothing about? 2. They don't really believe that an undifferentiated ball of cells is a person and are only pursuing a ban on abortion in order to harass women. In which case, why are we listening to obvious bigots?



#57076: — 01/09  at  01:38 PM
Anyone who considers Florida to be a secure-abortion-rights state hasn't been paying much attention to the (admittedly unappetizing) state legislature here.

The most likely consequence of illegalized abortion will not be a return to "back-alley" abortions, but a flood of black-market "abortion pills" - possibly even more dangerous, given the vagaries of the contraband pharmaceuticals industry and the folklore of desperate users. As a side benefit for the christocrats, feminist/healthcare activists setting up underground abortion networks will be liable to drug-war prosecution.

Call your senators to oppose the Alito nomination now.



#57077: — 01/09  at  01:45 PM
mcubed, I used to think somewhat as you do. Then I started listening more carefully to what "pro-life" types actually say, and of course, also vetting their positions on other issues (viz. Ali Baba's post) to see how consistently "pro-life"- and pro-child- they really are. The more I do that, the more I come to believe that it really is at least 95% about "all your uterus are belong to us". That's not callousness, it's coming to terms with an unpleasant reality.



#57078: paul — 01/09  at  02:17 PM
Well, your usual high-quality commenters have weighted in already, and I like the follow-up research on STDs and the likelihood of a state's protection of women's rights.

I'm troubled by the idea that if Roe is struck down (or the Democrats make a strategic retreat on it), what happens in those states who claim the ownership of all female reproductive systems w/in their sovereign borders? Will we see stakeouts of women's health clinics at state lines, like we used (still do) see liquor stores on county and state boundaries, with any eye to publicizing/harassing women who have to leave their own state for health care?

In the spirit of the graphics above, does anyone know of the equivalent of the CIA world fact book, but for states? It would be interesting to see how states fare on all kinds of metrics, from education funding/child, personal rights (recreational drugs, abortion, bike/motorcycle helmets), tax rates, etc. Call it the Freedom/Personal Responsibility Index if you like. I would be interested in seeing some kind of national comparison.

And I think PZ stacks the deck on his submit words: mine is genus.



Page 1 of 5 pages  1 2 3 >  Last »

Next entry: Cryptographers, kids, and cats, too

Previous entry: Youse could have a little…accident

<< Back to main

Info

email PZ Myers
Search
Archives
UMM—America's best public liberal arts college