Coathangers Be Damned! 90% Of World’s Women Hellbent On Having Abortions, No Matter What The Law!
Legal Or Not, Abortion Rates Similar
Induced abortion: estimated rates and trends worldwide
A new World Health Organization study on abortion is out, and all the news outlets are interpreting it differently! Over at FOX, the big news is the study’s estimate that one in five pregnancies ends in abortion and 90% of women will have an abortion before the age of 45. Meanwhile at the New York Times, the take is that outlawing abortion will not reduce the number of abortions. “”What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion,” says Dr. Paul Va Look of WHO. “If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.” Now, I am all for keeping abortion VERY VERY LEGAL, but all this shit strikes me as a little crazytown, because I know for a fact that there is a big fucking difference between taking two pills and sticking a rusty hanger up my cervix, and one of those differences is that I live in a society wherein I would not only not be exiled by my peers for having an unplanned baby out of wedlock but I could probably figure out a way to feed it.
Ah, there’s nothing quite like a wee bit o’ statistical manipulation to fuel a good debate, is there? Especially when you consider the “95% all women will have at least one abortion before the age of 45” argument. This is a particularly interesting bit of mathmatical masturbation, given that something like 10% of women somehow manage to make it to age 45 without getting pregnant.
Yeah, I know; I can’t ‘splain that one, either. That’s why we have Fox News Channel, though- to explain to ideological apostates like me not only the way things are, but they way they ought to be.
I suppose abortion is simply destined to be one of those issues where never the twain shall meet. After all, it’s not as if there’s any middle ground available. While no reasonable person would agree that abortion is a good thing, a woman’s right to abortion was confirmed by the US Supreme Court in 1973’s Roe v. Wade. This would seem to fall under what current Chief Justice John Roberts referred to as “settled law” during his confirmation hearings. Not that this reality will ever prevent the anti-choice crowd from twisting what ever arguments and statistics they can in their ongoing efforts to achieve their agenda. From what I can tell, the agenda consists of forcing women who want abortions into back alleys and returning the control of women’s reproduction to men, where it rightly belongs, anyway.
Back to the future, eh?
