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

To: Solon who wrote (17257)	6/21/2001 12:14:32 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 82486

That has nothing to do with the facts under discussion. I made two points to you: Firstly, that the developed countries were legal abortions and the developing and undeveloped were mainly illegal. This you knew without statistics. I know abortion is legal in most developed countries. I don't know that it is illegal in most developing countries. You provide the example of several countries in Latin America where it is illegal but I don't think it is illegal in most of Asia, and I haven't heard anything about it being illegal in most countries in Africa. You have not given one shred of evidence--NOT ONE SHRED--to counter the statistics showing no appreciable difference in abortions undertaken where they are illegal versus legal. NOT ONE. You haven't shown any solid evidence showing that the difference in abortion undertaken where they are illegal is insignificant. You have not shown that abortion are illegal in most developing countries. Even if it is true that most developing countries do not have legal abortion, developing countries makes a lousy proxy for countries where abortion is illegal because it is possible perhaps even likely that a disproportionate number of abortions in developing countries take place in the developing countries where abortion is illegal. Vietnam, which apparently has the highest abortion rate in the world, is one country that fits this idea (a developing country with legal abortion and a much higher rate of abortion then most developing countries). Also even if we ignore all of that (and its a lot to ignore) and agreed that there is no major difference between abortion rates in countries where abortion is illegal and where it is legal it still would be weak support for the idea that making abortion illegal does not reduce abortions because of all the other differences between developing and developed countries. These differences (particularly the fact that developing countries are poor and a woman undergoing an unwanted pregnancy in one of them is more likely to be in a truly desperate situation then one in a developed country) may cause abortion to be in much greater demand in developing countries then in developed countries, but the laws against it might discourage some of these abortions bringing the actual rates closer together. And then on top of all of that there is the fact that according to your own data ("34 abortions occur per 1,000 women in the developing world, and 39 are performed per 1,000 women in developed countries.") abortions still happen more often in developed countries. 5 more per thousand women is enough to result in millions of extra abortions per year. So if laws against abortion reduced the abortion rate by 5 per thousand women and there are say 2.5 bil. women in developing countries and going by your own assumption that most developing countries outlaw abortion, 2 billion of these women live in countries where abortion is illegal, then the fact that abortion is illegal in these countries would be saving 10 million unborn children a year. And that is if I accept all of your assumptions and drop all of my objections to them. No, Tim. I guess I can't, LOL! And you can't change mine by saying: "Maybe, maybe, may be, may be, maybe, maybe." But you are welcome to keep giving me your "argument" that "maybe" there is a secret variable messing up the statistics on incidence of abortion, I show weakness after weakness in your argument and your use of statistics, no I do not specifically prove you wrong but I show again and again why you have not supported your argument. You use statistics to show something about one group (developing countries) , and then claim they say something about another group (countries where abortion is illegal) when these groups are not equivalent. There is overlap maybe a lot of overlap between them but they are two different groups. That is the most central and most obvious weakness in your argument and one that doesn't rely on any maybes and doesn't need any statistics. I ask, do you maintain that the two groups of countries are the same or not? If yes, then I ask for evidence from you, if not then your argument falls apart. and that woman die far less when abortions are illegal than when they are legal! You must enjoy setting up and knocking down strawmen. I have not ever made any such statement to any person on SI or elsewhere. Tim