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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (17120)	6/19/2001 5:31:51 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I didn't challenge any assertion specifically about latin american countries Yes, you did. I said: "The simple truth of the matter is that in Roman Catholic Latin America, abortion is illegal, but is being performed at one of the highest levels in the world." You challenged it, I quote: "No its not the simple truth. Communist and former communist countries have higher rates." You say that "the statistics show very clearly...the religious opposition was not reducing abortions, but only endangering mothers". The statistics show no such thing. Let me ask you something: Taking the question in general terms--do you believe that having an abortion in a country where abortions are illegal is safer than having an abortion in a country where abortion is legal?? Secondly, do you believe that unsafe abortions are unsafe, and is it fair to say that that which is unsafe is also an endangerment??

To: TimF who wrote (17120)	6/19/2001 5:48:28 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

from Guttmacher... LEGALITY IS NOT THE DETERMINING FACTOR. "If legality is not the determining factor, what drives the rates at which abortions occur in a given country?..." "Yet, while it may seem paradoxical, a country's abortion rate is not closely correlated with whether abortion is legal there. For example, abortion levels are quite high in Latin American countries, where abortion is highly restricted. (In fact, 20 million of the 46 million abortions performed annually worldwide occur in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws.) At the same time, abortion rates are quite low throughout Western Europe, where the procedure is legal and widely available. Also, Eastern and Western Europe have the world's highest and lowest abortion rates, respectively, yet abortion is generally legal throughout the Continent. If legality is not the determining factor, what drives the rates at which abortions occur in a given country? Clearly, a key factor is the rate at which women experience unintended pregnancies--itself a function of the interplay between a couple's family-size (and timing) goals and their contraceptive use. Abortion levels are high in countries where the desire for small families is strong but contraceptive use is low or ineffective. For example, in most of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics, where desired family size has been small for many years, modern contraceptive methods were not generally available until recently. As a result, women relied on abortion--which was legal, safe and easily accessible--to regulate births. However, as contraceptives have become much easier to obtain in recent years, the situation has begun to change rapidly, and abortion rates in some of these countries fell by as much as 50% between 1990 and 1996. In sharp contrast, even in countries where abortion is legal and widely available, abortion rates are low if couples practice contraception effectively to limit or space births. In the Netherlands, for example, where abortion has been legal and widely accessible for many years, abortion and unintended pregnancy rates are low because of widespread contraceptive use."

To: TimF who wrote (17120)	6/19/2001 6:00:40 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE THAT ILLEGAL ABORTIONS PRESENT ANY DANGER TO A WOMAN, DOES IT, TIM? It is all a pro-choice conspiracy. Those damn statistics don't show a damn thing. Nope, nope--don't know what you're talking about, Solon. Ilegal abortions protect the rights of children, and they make it safe for woman. The statistics don't show me nothin. The people doing the statistics are all working for the pro-choice. They're all a bunch of liars. Women don't probably even have abortions. Illegal abortions protect the rights of children. It makes abortions a lot safer for woman. Yep. Yep. Yup. "The death rate associated with abortion is hundreds of times higher in developing regions, where the procedure is often illegal, than in developed countries (Table 1). The rate is highest--almost 700 deaths per 100,000 procedures--in Africa. Since well-off women in cities are frequently able to obtain safe abortions even when it is against the law, the majority of deaths and complications from abortion occur among low-income women and women living in rural areas who undergo unsafe, illicit procedures. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table 1 Abortion-Related Deaths -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Region Deaths per 100,000 abortions -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Developing1 330 Africa 680 South & Southeast Asia 283 Latin America 119 Developed .0.2-1.2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Excluding China. Source: The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), Sharing Responsibility: Women, Society and Abortion Worldwide, New York: AGI, 1999, p. 35."

To: TimF who wrote (17120)	6/19/2001 6:06:39 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 82486

Don't worry, Tim. None of this stuff really hapens. It is all made up. Not one word of it is true. You can safely ignore it and stick to your beliefs. "Each year, more than four million women in Latin America undergo an induced abortion. Because most abortions are illegal, these procedures are performed under clandestine and often dangerous conditions. As a result, the region faces a serious public health problem that threatens women's lives, endangers their reproductive health and imposes a severe strain on already overextended health and hospital systems. The practice of induced abortion in Latin America is shrouded in secrecy, a direct result of the stringent legal limitations on abortion throughout most of the region. Induced abortion is punishable by law in almost every country except Cuba and a few other Caribbean nations. In most of the region, doctors may legally terminate a pregnancy that threatens the life of the woman, that results from rape or incest, or that is characterized by fetal deformity,1 but these options are rarely used. Concern over the high level of clandestine abortion in Latin America is not new. Policymakers and health professionals have been aware for the past 20–30 years that unsafe procedures were being performed in most countries of the region, and at a leve l with serious consequences for women's health and for the cost of national health care services. Community surveys conducted in Chile in the early 1960s were the first attempt to measure the extent of the problem. These surveys found that women were likely to have two or three abortions over the course of their childbearing years.2 And studies in the 1970s in countries as diverse as Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela indicated that women averaged 0.5–1.5 induced abortions over their reproductive lifetime in these coun tries, and 2.0 or more induced abortions in Chile and Cuba.3 Although most Latin American health experts were aware of the general scale of clandestine abortion and related problems, until recently they had little reliable information with which to answer many questions. What methods are used to induce abortion? Who are the major practitioners? How many women are hospitalized for the treatment of complications, and what proportion is this of the actual numbers of women experiencing induced abortion? Which women are most likely to have induced abortions, and for what reasons? This report presents an overview of the practice of induced abortion in Latin America. It draws upon a number of sources: a collaborative study on clandestine abortion in six countries; a large-scale study in urban Colombia; an in-depth study of trends i n abortion and contraception in three countries; and a number of smaller studies. Findings from many of these studies were presented at the first regional meeting on induced abortion in Latin America, held in Colombia in 1994.4 Current Level of Abortion Estimated rates of abortion are highest in Peru and Chile (each year, almost one woman in every 20 aged 15–49 has an induced abortion), intermediate in Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic (about one woman in 30), and lowest in Mexico (approxi mately one in 40). If these rates continue to prevail throughout the 35 years of a woman's reproductive lifetime, the average woman in Mexico is likely to have had at least one abortion by the time she is 50, compared with about 1.6 abortions among women in Chile and about 1.8 among women in Peru. If the annual number of abortions estimated to occur in these six countries (2.8 million in the early 1990s) is extrapolated to the entire region, then about four m illion induced abortions are being carried out each year in Latin America (Table 1)." agi-usa.org

To: TimF who wrote (17120)	6/19/2001 6:35:21 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

agi-usa.org "An estimated 43% of women will have at least 1 abortion by the time they are 45 years old." I wonder how many husbands, children, mothers and fathers condemn these 43 %?? I wonder how many husbands, children, mothers and fathers would vote to force these 43% to risk their life having the abortion done illegally? "INCIDENCE OF ABORTION 49% of pregnancies among American women are unintended; 1/2 of these are terminated by abortion. In 1997, 1.33 million abortions took place, down from an estimated 1.61 million in 1990. From 1973 through 1997, more than 35 million legal abortions occurred. Each year, 2 out of every 100 women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion and 55% have had a previous birth. An estimated 43% of women will have at least 1 abortion by the time they are 45 years old. Each year, an estimated 50 million abortions occur worldwide. Of these, 20 million procedures are obtained illegally."