Friday 19 December 2008

Zygote Zealots Distort Results of Study.

It should no longer surprise me whenever I read a headline that distorts information from a typical fetus fetishist perspective. Here's the most recent example.

"Drug abuse common among women who have abortion"
Yet information about the study provided in the news item does NOT make that claim.

Kaeleen Dingle from the University of Queensland's School of Population Health examined 280 women aged between 18 and 23 who have experienced pregnancy, and found a link between losing a baby and mental health issues.

The data was taken from a long-running study that has followed a group of Brisbane mothers for 21 years, checking in at various intervals to examine the outcome of their pregnancies. As part of her PhD research, Ms Dingle interviewed the original mothers' daughters who had fallen pregnant themselves in their late teens and early 20s. She found the group was three times' more likely to abuse heavy substances, including heroin and speed.

"The young women who reported having an abortion and those who had suffered a miscarriage had equal increased risk of illicit drug use and alcohol problems," Ms Dingle said.
A quick google search for the name Kaeleen Dingle indicates that the habitual disseminators of lying bullshit and zygote zealotry such as Free Republic have already started to distort the information available, even though science and reality-based news sources are reporting the data correctly.
“Our findings suggest that this increased risk of psychiatric problems in some women after an abortion may be associated with pregnancy loss rather than caused by the experience of having an induced abortion,” she said. ...

Ms Dingle said the study had implications for caregivers, who may need to give more counselling and support to women who have lost a pregnancy. “Also, health professionals involved in the care of young women with mental health problems need to take good pregnancy histories, as young women can have complex pregnancy histories involving births, miscarriages and abortions,” she said.

Ms Dingle's PhD project is examining common mental health outcomes of young people who enter adulthood earlier than their peers through circumstances such as early parenting, early live-in parenting and early independent living.

Note also the context of her research, which will be conspicuously absent from the right wingnutter's and abortion criminalizers' shrieeekkk blogging as they distort the information to suit their propaganda needs.

6 comments:

Alison said...

Whereas we all know that an unwanted baby carried to term is the far less stressful outcome and much less likely to lead to substance abuse!
I was going to say something nahsty about how the Dingle ate my baybeee but the miscontrual of her research is obviously not her fault and she has been giving interviews to the effect that her research does not support a pro-life(sic) position.

deBeauxOs said...

Yeah, Alison. This is important, longitudinal research that she is doing. Those are some hard scrabble life stories that she is analyzing in order to flag indicators that can be useful in setting compassionate public policy, and providing appropriate social services to women in crisis.

JJ said...

This little distortion comes from the same school of "thought" that maintains abortion causes psychological problems, drug addiction, alcoholism, etc, because a higher than average % of women with psychological and addiction problems have had abortions.

They conveniently overlook the fact that these problems most likely pre-exised the abortions, and were contributing factors to why the unwanted pregnancy happened in the first place. Addiction/psych problems = less control and self-esteem = more likely to have sex accidents.

Fuck, it's so easy to do takedowns on these cretins it's almost not worth the calories it takes to type it out.

fern hill said...

Alison funny. :D

I edit 'higher edumacation' textbooks for a living. There are lots and lots of them either entirely devoted to Critical Thinking or have biggish sections on it. Obviously, still not enough.

But what a waste of time and money these fetus fetishists create. All kinds of smart people have to debunk their bullshit over and over. APA twice in the last twenty years did ginormous reports on how flawed these 'abortion hurts women' so-called studies are.

Still, they keep churning out their misrepresentations.

And, yeah, JJ, it's easy but we have to keep doing it.

JJ said...

I know, I know. It's the reason I post comments at BBW now & then -- BS always needs to be called out, even if nobody is listening.

Beijing York said...

Can't wait for the next study, the one that correlates the length of a woman's hemline with abortion :-)

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