PAS?

Anti-choicers have long claimed that abortion causes PAS - Post Abortion Syndrome. They claim that women suffer anxiety, depression, substance abuse, etc, etc, after having an abortion. This is a highly contentious claim. The anti-choicers justify this claim by referencing the anecdotal stories of women who are unhappy with the choice they made, and regret it (I wonder who made them feel bad? Could it be all the idiots insisting that they are cold hearted if they don't regret their decision? Could it be all the zealots calling them murderers? As I've discussed before, the anti-choicers might be partially to blame in this).

But now the Dakota Voice (a right wing news source) is reporting on a new study has been released claiming a correlation between abortion and various anxiety and substance abuse issues. While I can't actually get into the study itself, and hence can't assess its worth, it's being published in what I take to be a decent peer-reviewed journal. Of course, given the other studies which deny this claim (linked to from the Voice article), and given the fact that statistical science is the least reliable of the sciences, it's still not clear that PAS actually exists.

And honestly, I wish the anti-choice crowd would stop pushing this. It's just another indication that they are completely devoid of any understanding of basic critical thinking skills. Even if abortion carried with it the risk of PAS, that does not make it any less a legal right. Children of religious nuts might vary well suffer psychological damage, but that doesn't mean we should make it illegal to teach your children that they are inherently worthless and evil and are headed for fire and brimstone. Many women suffer post-partum depression, but that's no reason to make having children illegal. Many of the choices we make carry with them risks to our persons - both physical and mental - but that doesn't necessarily mean that those choices should be made illegal. You've got to make an argument for that.

But that's just the thing. The anti-choice crowd lacks any reasonable argument for their position. They rely on religious dogma and emotional appeals to convince people. And that's what they are doing with PAS - attempting to use it to frighten women away from making a choice that might actually be best for them in their situation.

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Anti-Choice Logic 101 - Abortion is Gross! Make it Illegal!

One of the things you often hear from anti-choicers when questioned about their use of grotesque photographs in attempting to shock people into believing as they do (rather than, say, using reason), is that abortion really is grotesque. That's what these people have to say in response to this challenge (note also the incoherence of what the latter commenter has to say. Why did they even publish that?) If you see what an abortion is, you’ll know it’s wrong. This is an argument, of sorts, and the argument is “This shocks your sensibilities, therefore it is wrong and should be illegal.”

Well, let’s get this straight. First, many of the pictures that are commonly used are misleading on their own. But even if they were pictures of what they purported to be, you’re arguing that we ought to ban all abortions because some of them are gross. And there are two things wrong with this argument. First, not all abortions are as grotesque or as shocking to our sensibilities as the pictures that anti-choicers favor. According to Guttmacher, 89% of abortions occur in the first trimester, and nearly 2/3 are performed before 9 weeks. Those abortion photos (when accurate) wouldn’t look anything like the anti-choice poster boy, Baby Malachi.

But the photos may still be disturbing. And this leads us to the other fault in using such photos as evidence that abortion should be illegal. There are lots of things that would really gross us out if we saw pictures of them. Don’t believe me? Try this one on for size (warning: you will likely be grossed out). Don’t you think that what happened to that poor sweet baby should be illegal? Isn't that just disgusting? Or how about this (again, warning). Looks an awful lot like some of the abortion photos, doesn’t it? In a way, it is an abortion photo. Note the little hand, almost gripping onto the forceps, and the hair just starting to grow on its little contorted head. Its life was ended prematurely, as it was ripped from that which sustained it. Shouldn’t that disgusting procedure be illegal too?

Well, the first image is a harlequin baby. Nature did that, terrible as it is. The second is actually an embryo that, through one of nature’s weird flukes, became a tumor. It’s a teratoma. It’s a twin, if you will, that failed to develop in utero, was absorbed by its sibling, and then spontaneously began to grow later. Its removal was not necessarily required to save the life of the host, but would you really want that thing growing inside you?

So what’s upshot of all this? The fact that something is disgusting, or really makes your stomach turn, or whatever, isn’t reason to make it illegal. This is the most common “argument” made by anti-choicers. And it’s completely fallacious.

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Anti-Choice Logic 101 – Margaret Sanger believed in Eugenics

You hear this from anti-choicers all the time. Margaret Sanger, one of the founders of Planned Parenthood, was a bigot who believed in eugenics. She thought that birth control should be used to wipe out “lesser” populations.

Well, it’s true that Margaret Sanger held these terrible beliefs. But it’s important to think about what the anti-choicers are trying to prove when they point this out. While many don’t state them outright (it’s easier to hide the flaws in your logic when you leave your conclusion unstated), there are 2 conclusions that they are usually trying to get people to draw. The first is that Planned Parenthood is an inherently racist organization that is trying to wipe out the African American population. The second is that the pro-choice ideals that Sanger held – the belief in the right of women to access contraception and abortion – must be wrong.

Let’s take the second of these conclusions first. According to this anti-choice argument, because Sanger was wrong about eugenics (and I mean really wrong), the rest of her beliefs must be wrong as well. Particularly her beliefs about birth control and abortion. Once the argument is clearly laid out, it should be immediately apparent how fallacious it is. Buddha was a sexist, therefore everything Buddha says must be wrong. But that’s just silly. People have both good and bad beliefs, but the presence of bad beliefs does not somehow magically poison all the other beliefs. Ghandi was a racist. Does that mean that everything he had to say about peace and harmony and passive resistance was wrong? Of course not. Buddha was a sexist. Does that mean that everything he had to say about spirituality was wrong? No. The founding fathers were slaveholders who thought they slavery was the way things were supposed to be. Does that mean that their beliefs in the democratic process and the value of liberty were wrong? Not at all. Their beliefs about slavery may have impacted the way they viewed democracy and liberty, just as Sanger’s belief in eugenics may have impacted the way she thought birth control should be used. But that doesn’t make the belief in the rights of women to have access to contraceptives and abortions wrong any more than the founding fathers’ misguided sense of how to dole out liberty makes their belief in the principles of liberty and democracy wrong. This argument is just a blatant non-sequitur.

Now, the first conclusion. The argument here is as follows: Margaret Sanger believed in eugenics and she was a founder of PP. Therefore, PP is a racist organization that is trying to wipe out the African American population. Now, as should be clear, this is the same sort of non-sequitur in the argument above. Just because the founder of an organization had a certain belief does not mean that the organization itself subscribes to it. The fact that the founder of PP believed in eugenics does not mean that PP believes in eugenics. To show that you will have to provide independent evidence.

And the anti-choice movement has attempted to do this. They point, for example, to statistics that show that African Americans have higher abortion rates. What they fail to mention, however, is that African Americans also have higher poverty rates, meaning that it is less likely that an African American woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy will have the resources to raise that child. They also fail to note that higher poverty rates usually means less access to contraception, making it more likely that a woman will find herself with an unwanted pregnancy.
So the fact that African American women have higher abortion rates doesn’t mean that this is the result of some evil eugenics plan of PP. Just another example of the “logic” of the anti-choice movement.

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Horton Hears A.... What?!

This is just too rich. Anti-abortion protestors decided the perfect venue would be the premiere of Horton Hears A Who - a children's flick. I don't know whether to laugh out loud or let out a big long sigh.

The reason the anti-choice crowd has latched on to this flick? It's theme is "A person's a person no matter how small". Well, duh! But guess what? That doesn't translate to "A person's a person even when it's just a collection of pluripotent cells". And once again - it doesn't matter if a blastocyst/embryo/fetus is a person! No person has the right to use another's body without their consent. Sheesh. How long are we going to talk past each other?

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Proposed Bill Makes CPCs Inform Patients That They Can Lie

This is good news. It’s about time that someone did something about these stupid Crisis Pregnancy Centers. What would be better if the bill actually made it the case that they have to tell the truth. But this is a start.

Joseph Bartlett, a Republican who opposes the bill, had this to say in defense of allowing to continue the centers to operate the way they have been:

The premise that we're going to require these organizations to disclaim that they don't have to tell the truth is just about the silliest thing I ever heard," he said. "We certainly don't do that in the case of politicians, do we?

Well, no, Joe, we don’t have a law that tells politicians that they have to admit that they don’t have to tell the truth. But as much as CPCs are more like politicians than they are like actual clinics, these places are falsely giving the impression that they are medical centers, which can be sued for lying to their patients. They aren’t medical centers, and as a result they are free to disseminate all the false information they want without penalty. And they do. Well, if we’re going to allow them to continue parading about like actual medical centers, we can at least make sure that women who go to them are aware of the stakes. What’s really silly here is the fact that you seem to think it’s okay for people to pretend to be offering medical services and then lie to the women who come to them for help.

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Let's Go Be Lazy in Wisconsin

So, anti-choice pharmacists in Wisconsin don't want to do their jobs. I've given my take on this before. If you can't perform the tasks of your profession, get another job. Don't ask the state to give you an exception. But the anti-choice, anti-birth control pharmacists of Wisconsin are in an uproar about more than just the prospect of dispensing what the doctor prescribes. They're ticked off about the Birth Control Protection Act, which not only protects the rights of patients by forcing pharmacists to do their job, but also defines 'abortion' so as to exclude the effects of contraceptives.

According to ChristianNewsWire, this is beyond the pale, since

It is a medical fact that the morning-after pill (a high dosage of the birth control pill) and most, if not all, birth control drugs and devices including the intrauterine device (IUD), Depo Provera, Norplant, the Patch, and the Pill can act to terminate a pregnancy by chemically altering the lining of the uterus (endometrium) so that a newly conceived child is unable to implant in the womb, thus starving and dying.

Well, no, actually, it's not a medical fact. If you define pregnancy as beginning at fertilization, then yes, IUDs do result in the termination of a pregnancy. And hormonal methods may have the same result, albeit very rarely, since their primary function is to prevent ovulation and thicken the mucus lining the cervix to prevent sperm from penetrating. And usually, if they don't succeed in that, the result is not an embryo being flushed from the woman's system, but implantation. But not only is it not a "medical fact" that pregnancy begins at fertilization, it's silly to even think of defining it as such. If that's the case, then many sexually active women have been pregnant numerous times and had miscarriages. Of course, they can't inform their doctors of this, since they don't know. Additionally, imagine attempting to expand this definition out, given the advances in reproductive technologies. When a doctor fertilizes a woman's egg with her partner's sperm in a pitre dish, is she pregnant? If a store of her fertilized eggs is preserved in deep freeze, does she remain pregnant until her blastocysts die? If she dies while those blastocysts are still being preserved, does that mean that a dead woman can be pregnant? If a couple enlists the aid of a surrogate mother, who is pregnant? It's obviously not the biological mother. But then the woman who has preserved blastocysts can't be pregnant either. If pregnancy begins at fertilization, then someone has got to be pregnant, though. The egg is fertilized, after all. Is the tank pregnant?

ChristianNewsWire's nutty statements of "medical fact" aside, what really caught my attention was this:

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the right to freely exercise one's religious convictions. The Wisconsin Constitution expressly protects the rights of conscience. Under Article 1, Section 18, of our state constitution, "any control of, or interference with, the rights of conscience" shall not be permitted.

Now, obviously ChristianNewsWire and the anti-birth control pharmacists who are pushing this line against the Birth Control Protection Act are thinking that they are going to stop this legislation by claiming it violates their religious freedom through their rights of conscience. Here's the problem. Not every one who is anti-choice is religious, or is anti-choice because of their religious convictions. Are these Wisconsin pharmacists suggesting that it's okay to force someone who is anti-choice, but has no religious affiliation, to dispense birth control? I doubt it. But if this really is about conscience, and not about religion, then the Wisconsin constitution would seem to protect the rights of conscience of vegetarians who work at McDonalds and don't want to serve meat, or vegans who work at Mervyns but refuse to sell wool or leather, or school nurses, or doctors, who believe that vaccines are evil and refuse to distribute them to kids. Or heck, some renegade pastafarians who refuse to serve spaghetti, but insist on working at Italian restaurants. It's their right of conscience, after all. I guess anyone who has scruples against doing something required by a profession can work in that profession and yet not do their job in Wisconsin. My new set of principles - never prostituting my labor out for pay. I think I'll go get a job in Wisconsin.

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Colorado Has Lost It Too

On the heels of Georgia's proposed bill to define personhood as beginning at conception, Colorado now has a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would do the same. And Mike Huckabee has endorsed it.

I don't think it necessary to rehash the idiocy, from a practical standpoint, of legally defining a fertilized egg as a person. What really confuses me is that it seems as though the people of Colorado and Georgia haven't really thought about this - which is certainly something one ought to do before making something the law of the land.

Speaking of the people of Colorado and Georgia making something the law of the land, since when are facts determined by a popular vote? There is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a fertilized embryo is a person. This is something that certainly hasn't been determined. And without significant justification for the claim, which anti-choicers haven't provided (and I suspect can't provide), voting to recognize this "fact" seems both premature and arrogant.

I'm not saying that we can't possibily recognize a fact even when it's not completely settled. What I am saying is that before you can legally recognize a fact, you should have and provide evidence that it is a fact. Anti-choicers have not done this.

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Vote Pro-Choice and Sit With Satan

Joe Feuerherd is wondering whether voting for a pro-choice democrat will endanger his immortal soul. I've posted on this issue before, but I think it's important to continue dialogue about it. Feuerherd is pro-life, but takes other issues facing the country to be more important. As a result, he plans on voting for a democrat despite the fact that church leaders (in this case, the Vatican) have said that doing so may result in eternal damnation. Now, I certainly do laud Feuerherd's bravery and integrity. He's willing to risk it, presumably because he thinks that, on this issue, the church is wrong. But how many others will be frightened away from voting their conscience by the warnings of church leaders that if they vote for anyone who supports abortion rights they will have to spend eternity at Satan's place? Can we really expect a large portion of the "flock" to go their own way, under the threat of hellfire? I don't think so. And that's scary. This is one of those points where the organization of religion is more dangerous than religious belief itself (although, it is, of course, sustained by religious belief).

Religious leaders should be ashamed of themselves. Not only is there no real theological or biblical foundation for the idea that abortion is a sin, but even if there were, it is sheer arrogance on their part to assume that they know which issue is more important in any given election. And it is even worse for them to try to frighten people into voting one way rather than another. Religion may be motivated by fear, but that doesn't mean voting should be.

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Abstinence Only Driver's Ed

This is just awesome.

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Colorado Rep. Calls Teen Parents "Sluts"

Oh, this is rich. Colorado Rep. Larry Liston made the following statement a a Republican caucus luncheon about teen parents:

In my parents' day and age, they were sent away. They were shunned. They were called what they are ... There's no sense of shame today. Society condones it ... They're sluts. And I don't mean just the women. I mean the men, too.

This is a prime example of the pro-life religious right's real agenda. They say they're all for saving babies. But rather than pushing for measures that would reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions, they'd rather shun those who find themselves in the unfortunate situation of being unmarried, young, and pregnant.

After all, a culture that denys its youth access to birth control and then shuns girls who get pregnant, brands them whores, sends them away, and destroys their future couldn't possibly prompt pregnant teens to opt for abortion, could it? At the base of this is just an outright hatred of women, and a fear of female sexuality and female empowerment. Rep. Liston wants us to return to the good ol' days when women's sexuality was treated as something that didn't exist, and women were denied power over their bodies, their futures, their lives, by the very cultural mores that he lauds. And, by the way, as far as I know, the men were never branded as sluts in those good ol' days.

Liston later apologized:

The derogatory term I used was offensive and inappropriate and I would like to apologize for using it.

To my mind, though, this is a non-apology. He apologizes for using the term "slut". But it doesn't matter what word he uses; it's the notion behind it that is offensive. I would only be satisfied by an apology that recognized the misogyny in Liston's original statement, and rejected it outright. I won't be holding my breath.

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Carlin on Abortion Rights

In a previous post, I mentioned some of the problems with legally defining a zygote as a person, as a bill before the Georgia state legislature proposes. George Carlin hits pretty much each and every point I made... with much better timing.

Warning: He uses explicit language and there are adult themes, so if you're seriously offended by that sort of thing...well, you're missing out.

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Georgia Anti-Choicers Have Lost It

A bill is being pushed in the Georgia state legislature by anti-choicers in that state. The bill criminalizes abortion, enshrines in law false statements about the effects of abortion, but also, most shockingly, defines a fetus as a person from the moment of conception.

Now, attempting to criminalize abortion is the full out goal of the anti-choice movement, and it is not shocking that they would attempt to legitimize some of the false claims they make about abortion by having them included in legislation. What's really crazy about this bill is the fact that it makes the bald assertion that personhood begins at conception. I'm seriously wondering how the anti-choice movement in Georgia could have failed to consider the implications of making this actual law.

First off, contrary to the reasoning in Roe, a woman's right to an abortion has nothing to do with personhood status, or lack thereof, of a fetus. The right to an abortion derives from the human right to bodily autonomy. No person can use the body of another without their consent. This is what grounds our right not to be raped, our right not to have our organs forcibly removed from us, and our right not to be used in crazy experiments without our consent. Whether a fetus is a person or not may very well impact the moral status of abortion, but it has no relevance to whether or not a woman has a legal right to an abortion.

So defining a fetus as a person from the moment of conception doesn't impact the reasoning behind the conclusion that a woman has the right to choose. But it seems to me that the Georgia legislators who introduced this bill, and the anti-choicers that are pushing it, haven't thought about the implications separate from the abortion issue that result from defining an embryo as a person. Would every embryo be given a social security number? How would that work? Would parents of this embryo get a child tax credit? Would the presumptive father have to start paying child support right then and there? How are they defining conception? If they mean fertilization, this would seriously impact the question of birth control. A number of methods allow fertilization but prevent implantation. Would use of those methods be murder? It seems like they must be, if these anti-choicers are right. And many of them stand behind this conclusion, holding that birth control is an abortifacent - and hence murder.

Invitro fertilization would also seem to lead to murder, since many fertilized embryos created in the process are never implanted, and are eventually destroyed. Guess that means that barren couples will just have to suffer despite the fact that the science exists that would allow them to have their very own child.

Additionally, a goodly number of fertilized zygotes fail to implant and are flushed out of the body. Are those to be counted as deaths? How will we know when such a death has occurred? Will we have to start mandating monthly pregnancy tests for women? Will we be reduced to checking tampons and maxi-pads for the remains of the dead? If they are really serious about this, then, on pain of inconsistency, it seems as though we would have to go through serious privacy violating measures in order to keep track of all these zygote-persons.

If a woman miscarries, or if a fertilized embryo that failed to implant is flushed out of her system, will we be holding her accountable for the death of this "person" if she, say, exercised too much? Or smoked? Or had a glass of wine or two? Or didn't eat enough? How much jail time should a woman who exercises vigorously be given if we happen to find a zygote on her tampon?

The Georgia anti-choicers apparently haven't thought about all this. But then again, that's not surprising. If anti-choicers thought a bit more about the implications of their views, they probably wouldn't be anti-choice.

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PAS for Men

The Reproductive Rights blogsphere has been buzzing about the new trend in the anti-choice movement - men's PAS. It all started with this article in the LA Times. And now, there is an excellent article over at AlterNet about this nonsense and how it might pose a danger for reproductive rights.

PAS, or "post abortion syndrome" has been something that the anti-choice crowd has been harping on for some time. It's modeled on PTSD, but, unlike PTSD, there is no real scientific evidence that PAS exists even in women who have had abortions. This hasn't dissuaded anti-choicers from now claiming that men experience it too. Oh, pobrecitos!

Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that there are going to be a wide range of emotional reactions to an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, and to an abortion. Different people are going to react differently both to the situation and to the choice that they make. But a syndrome? If there were some actual evidence, then maybe I'd sit up and take notice, but there isn't. And what the anti-choice crowd doesn't seem to notice (or perhaps, doesn't care about) is that even if PAS existed, this would still not be an argument for making abortion illegal. The fact that the exercise of my rights has an emotional impact on you doesn't mean that I shouldn't have those rights. Unless there are some premises added there, all you've got is a wild non-sequitur.

On a side note, I find this part of the oh-so-woeful story told in the NY Time article particularly telling:

Chris Aubert, a Houston lawyer, felt only indifference in 1985 when a girlfriend told him she was pregnant and planned on an abortion. When she asked if he wanted to come to the clinic, he said he couldn't; he played softball on Saturdays. He stuck a check for $200 in her door and never talked to her again.

Aubert goes on to say that while he feels as though the abortions cleared a path to success for him, his moral compunctions compel him to say that, if he could, he would go back and "save the babies". But when asked whether the women who he impregnated might feel differently, his shocked response is "I never really thought about it for the women".

He never really thought about it for the women. Given his decision to slide a check in the door of one woman and walk away like a jackass, I can't say that I'm surprised. Maybe if he had thought about it for the woman he would have a better understanding of both the reason why women need to have a choice and the choice that this particular woman made. Maybe if he had actually given any thought to it at all, he wouldn't now be so pained by something that, at the time, mattered less to him than a softball game.

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Stigmatizing Abortion - Saving teh babiez or harming women?

Anti-choice zealots standing outside abortion clinics shouting hateful things at the women who enter couldn't possibly have negative impacts, could it? The stigma that the anti-choicers are working hard to attach to abortion and the women who have them couldn't possibly result in death and maiming, could it? According to Eddie Mhlanga, the head of the UZKN Medical School's Obstetrics and Gynecology unit, yes it can.

Stigma creates fertile ground for illegal abortion providers to manipulate and possibly kill vulnerable women who acquire their services...

In KwaZulu-Natal in particular, health workers are still very judgmental, sometimes deliberately, to poor women who are in most need of the government facility... Mhlanga added that many KZN hospitals made it difficult even for health workers who wanted to provide the service, as they were called "murderers" and "terminators".

Anti-choicers often push this idea that they are working to reduce the number of abortions, that by standing outside abortion clinics shouting hateful things or condescendingly praying for the fetuses they are convincing women not to have abortions. The experience in South Africa seems to show, however, that rather than convincing women not to have an abortion, they are convincing them instead to have it in the shadows, where it is unsafe but secret.

Also in the article - another anti-choice claim shot down by data taken after South Africa's Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act is the idea that back alley abortions don't result in problems. That women don't die from them. Hmmmm... according to the article deaths from septic abortions have dropped by 90%, the number of women coming in from botched abortions dropping from 12 or 14 to 1 or 2 at one hospital. I thought women didn't die from illegal abortion? Or are the anti-choicers now going to fall back on the disgusting idea that these women deserved it?

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