Lies, Damn Lies, and BAD Science

The War on Truth and Science continues.

Today, another story about women regretting abortion.

A majority of American women who aborted their unborn babies say that their lives didn’t improve at all or refused to answer a question about any positive effects of aborting, a new study reports.

Roughly 54 percent of women said that their lives post-aborting weren’t any better than before they had their abortion, according to a study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Approximately 32 percent of women reported no significant positives from the decision to abort, while 22 percent did not respond to the question.

PDF here.

First thing: The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons sounds all legit, doesn't it? It is not. This is a group of whackadoodle conservative doctors who promote discredited BS like vaccines cause autism and abortion causes breast cancer.

Second thing: Lead author is our old pal, Priscilla Coleman. We'll get to her in a minute.

Third thing: Motive. This "study" is no doubt in response to several legit studies indicating that far from regretting abortion, a huge majority of women feel exquisite relief.

Ninety-five percent of women who have had abortions do not regret the decision to terminate their pregnancies, according to a study published last week in the multidisciplinary academic journal PLOS ONE.

Next thing: Look at the abstract, highlighted by me.



I think that's enough said.

Perfesser Coleman, also on Rewire's list of False Witnesses, aka liars for hire, came to our attention in 2012 when a paper of hers was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, a venue not known for BAD (biased, agenda=driven) Science.

Here's the result.

Results: Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be attributable to abortion.

Here's a real scientist, PZ Myers:

Those numbers are so extravagantly extreme that there ought to be alarm bells going off in your head right now, and the research had better be darned thorough and unimpeachably clean.

As it turns out, it isn’t. The author of the paper, Priscilla Coleman, is an anti-abortion advocate, and 11 of the 22 studies sampled for the meta-analysis are by…Priscilla Coleman. Methinks there might be a hint of publication bias there, something that has been confirmed statistically by Ben Goldacre.

And here's a bunch of scientists eviscerating her methodology, biases, and whatnot.

Maybe the good professor is learning something, though. Madly inflated numbers make even lay-people's alarm bells go off. The recent study's claims are much more modest. Let's see if it gets any traction in the mainstream press.

We Do NOT Need a Law

Contrary to the foot-stomping fetus fetishists, Canada does NOT need an abortion law.

The foot-stompers shrieeeek: "Canada is the only country in the western world with no laws restricting abortion!!!!!!!!"

Well, why would we want to use a law to restrict it?

Does it need to be restricted because it's dangerous?

No. Abortion is a very safe medical procedure. In fact, it is "markedly" safer than childbirth.

Does it need to be restricted because it's over-used?

No. Abortion rates in Canada are lower than in France, Sweden, US, and UK, just to name a few countries.

Does it need to be restricted because women regret having the procedure? (Leaving aside the idiocy of legislating against something that is potentially regretted.)

No. The "Myth of Abortion Regret" has been definitively debunked, once in a study from last year and again in a new study released last week.

The first one showed that 95% of women are satisfied they made the right choice and the second showed that women "are significantly more sure about their decision, for example, than people facing reconstructive knee surgery."

(On the idiocy of legislating against regret, how about a law restricting childbearing as more and more women are feeling able to speak up about their own regret over having kids?)

Canada has no abortion law. At all.

And where would we put one? Most countries restrict abortion under their Criminal Codes. Do we want to recriminalize abortion, forcing women to seek practitioners willing to break that law? A tiny minority of Canadians do, yes.

Or maybe outlaw it as an amendment to our Constitution, as countries like Ireland do. (Irish human rights campaigners are in the process of trying to repeal such an amendment.)

Or maybe we should take a sneakier approach. Propose an amendment to the Criminal Code that appears to merely seek tougher penalties for harm done to fetuses. This is what C225, or the Exploiting Grief to Attack Abortion Rights Bill -- being voted on tomorrow -- is attempting.

The sponsor of that bill, super-duper anti-choicer Cathay Wagantall had a poll done to assess Canadians' feelings on the matter.

Oopsie! The poll found that "97 per cent of Canadians support a woman's right to an abortion under varying circumstances."

So. No. Canadians do not want any laws on abortion.

Because we do NOT need any laws on abortion.