Deirdre A. McQuade, an official of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), criticized a study by researchers from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization published in the October 13, 2007 issue of The Lancet, calling for the global legalization and promotion of abortion, “Induced Abortion: Estimated Rates and Trends Worldwide.â€Â
“Some say the new Guttmacher study shows that legalizing abortions makes them ‘safe;’ but the study’s methodology is flawed. The authors start out by simply defining ‘safe’ abortions as ‘those that meet legal requirements’ in countries with permissive laws,†said Ms. McQuade. “But by this unusual definition, legal abortions are ‘safe’ even if they kill women as well as their unborn children. The authors then say that illegal abortions are ‘harmful’ – even when women experience no medical complications – because women have to violate the law. This is a closed semantic circle into which no fact about real-life women can intrude.â€Â
“An accompanying Lancet editorial says the worldwide abortion situation has been worsened by the United States’ Mexico City policy. But the study says that total worldwide abortions substantially decreased from 1995 (when the policy was not in effect) to 2003 (after it was reinstated),†Ms. McQuade continued.
“Lost in the authors’ ideological fog is the fact that abortion always kills; legal or illegal, it sometimes also kills women, especially when they are poor and have a terrible health care system. Promoting more abortions will not change this. Rather than pitting women and their children against each other, we need to stand in solidarity with both and focus on improving the quality of global health care,†Ms. McQuade said.
Stupid Catholics. So inconvenient.
George Will did abortion today for his column. I didn’t read it cause he sort of gave the whole thing away in the title.
A sterile coathanger? Hey dude, these are people of color. Does the U.N. really care about details?
Sorry, Geezer, but you can’t categorically say that these are people of color. You have to know if they are authentic POCs by examining their thoughts for heterodoxy.
But “defining ‘safe’ abortions as abortions that are legal in countries with permissive laws” is SCIENCE!
You can’t question SCIENCE! Shouldn’t she be torturing Gallileo or something, and leave SCIENCE to the people who brought you “the population bomb,” “the epidemic of heterosexual AIDS in America,” and “human-induced Global Warming?”
Oh yeah – SCIENCE!
Good heavens, Miss Hakamoto, you’re beautiful!
I cannot figure out if I would vote for Lowell or Okajima as MVP.
damned Catholics… don’t they have something better to do? like do something for the children (who are our future) or something? fucking supertitious bastards!
Cue Semanticelo or Andy:
Oh, yeah?–Reagan said ketchup was a vegetable.
Wishbone, have you seen Heinz bottles lately. Golly, how did we live before Lycopene.
Reagan was ahead of his time.
Oh, yeah?–Reagan said ketchup was a vegetable.
When, as any botanist can tell you, ketchup is a fruit.
McQuade may have a point that the criteria for “safe” is imperfect, but if she has a better standard than legal and medically sound it’s a shame she didn’t bother to share it. In any event, she’s the pot calling out the kettle with her “lost in the authors’ ideological fog” nonsense. If you were teaching someone about logical fallacies “the fact that abortion always kills” and “pitting women and their children against each other” would be tough to beat as examples of begging the question.
SeanH, wouldn’t an abortion that fails to destroy the unborn be considered a failure?
The question, Sean, is: why do they resort to such chicanery to suit their agenda? What do you think?
Of course it would, but there’s plenty of debate about whether destroying an embryo is killing a child. McQuade is taking that which is to be proven by argument – her belief that abortion kills babies – and using it to argue in support of her belief. That’s begging the question.
Dan, I honestly don’t know if they resorted to chicanery or not. I’m too lazy to look up the study. All I’m saying is that legal and using sound medical practices is probably as good a definition of safe as you can realistically get. McQuade certainly didn’t write anything that persuades me that there’s any chicanery there. Her entire argument is a gob of illogical thought
First, she takes the fact that some women die from complications and claims that makes it wrong to call any legal abortions safe. By that silly standard there are no safe medical procedures or medications of any kind anywhere. Then she takes that illogical thinking, turns it inside out, and argues, ridiculously, that an illegal abortion isn’t inherently riskier for the woman. She closes with a whole series of question begging. Not taking McQuade’s beliefs that “abortion always kills”, legalizing abortion is “Promoting more abortions”, and abortion pits “women and their children against each other” as given assumptions doesn’t, of itself, make the study authors ideologues. She’d see that if she weren’t such an ideologue herself.
McQuade suggests that in point of fact it is the definition of “safe” on the part of the study organization that is tautological. If that is true, then it is a problem.
Right, but I don’t believe that to be the case. The summary’s here, but I’m at work so I can’t register for the full text article. From what I gather they’re calling abortions that meet the medical standards of developed countries safe and those that don’t unsafe, which seems reasonable to me.
I’ll have to look at it too, Sean, but it strikes me that it’s likely one of those self-fulfilling studies, the kind of which discovers that the United States has the 43rd best medical care in the world, because what it’s actually out to gauge is how socialistic the medical system is.
“From what I gather they’re calling abortions that meet the medical standards of developed countries safe and those that don’t unsafe, which seems reasonable to me.”
And not tautological.