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New Abortion on the rise under Bush admin
[link|http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=041013#5|http://www.sojo.net/...ay&issue=041013#5]

I look at the fruits of political policies more than words. I analyzed the data on abortion during the George W. Bush presidency. There is no single source for this information - federal reports go only to 2000, and many states do not report - but I found enough data to identify trends. My findings are counterintuitive and disturbing.

Abortion was decreasing. When President Bush took office, the nation's abortion rates were at a 24-year low, after a 17.4% decline during the 1990s. This was an average decrease of 1.7% per year, mostly during the latter part of the decade. (This data comes from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life using the Guttmacher Institute's studies).

Enter George W. Bush in 2001. One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge. Instead, the opposite happened.

I found three states that have posted multi-year statistics through 2003, and abortion rates have risen in all three: Kentucky's increased by 3.2% from 2000 to 2003. Michigan's increased by 11.3% from 2000 to 2003. Pennsylvania's increased by 1.9% from 1999 to 2002. I found 13 additional states that reported statistics for 2001 and 2002. Eight states saw an increase in abortion rates (14.6% average increase), and five saw a decrease (4.3% average decrease).

Under President Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed. Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction.

How could this be? I see three contributing factors:

First, two thirds of women who abort say they cannot afford a child (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Web site). In the past three years, unemployment rates increased half again. Not since Hoover had there been a net loss of jobs during a presidency until the current administration. Average real incomes decreased, and for seven years the minimum wage has not been raised to match inflation. With less income, many prospective mothers fear another mouth to feed.

Second, half of all women who abort say they do not have a reliable mate (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life). Men who are jobless usually do not marry. Only three of the 16 states had more marriages in 2002 than in 2001, and in those states abortion rates decreased. In the 16 states overall, there were 16,392 fewer marriages than the year before, and 7,869 more abortions. As male unemployment increases, marriages fall and abortion rises.

Third, women worry about health care for themselves and their children. Since 5.2 million more people have no health insurance now than before this presidency - with women of childbearing age overrepresented in those 5.2 million - abortion increases.
-------
Fourth - not providing information on birth control most likely results in higher pregnancy rates which results in higher abortion rates given reasons one through three. Makes sense, dont'cha think?



"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."     --Albert Einstein

"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."     --George W. Bush
Expand Edited by tuberculosis Aug. 21, 2007, 12:47:17 PM EDT
New Heh.. a splendid companion for
[link|http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/12/16/DDGAB9A1KT1.DTL| Jon Carroll's] commentary du jour.
JON CARROLL


Thursday, December 16, 2004


We are so very boring. We are so very predictable. George Bush has won a second election almost fair and square, so the mood of the country is against us, and our nattering is just counterproductive and we should get with the program. Nobody cares anymore.

I do notice that a lot of media have taken the hint. Disparaging the Bush administration is so very last year, so very John Kerry. Better to, as they say, give the benefit of the doubt. Better to reassess our priorities. Better to understand that faith and family are important.

It's bewildering. I mean that. Here is an administration that so terribly botched the invasion of another country that this nation is now caught in a deadly quagmire with no anti-quagmire weapons. Soldiers are dying because of Pentagon incompetence. And yet the Pentagon is more powerful now than it was a year ago. The war is getting less attention even as it gets more deadly. Why? Because the media failed to understand that faith and family are important.

I think most people who voted for Bush would agree that he's not very good at being president. Polls show that most people understand that the war has been terribly managed, even as they also think that al Qaeda controlled Iraq. But still, they trust George Bush to get us out of the war that he got us into. Why? Because he understands that faith and family are important.

I am afraid that we have a definition problem. I am afraid that my definition of "faith and family" is no longer the dominant definition. I am afraid that "faith" means "Christian" and "family" means "conformist." I am afraid that "small-town values" is code for a whole bunch of stuff, including prudery, insularity and bigotry.

Note how fashionable anti-Semitism has become. Pat Buchanan and other conservative commentators have made it clear that their attacks on "Hollywood" are really just attacks on Jews, who are once again degrading our Christian culture with their filthy cosmopolitan ways.

I think the failure to distinguish between kinds of Islam comes from willful ignorance. Moderate Muslims trying to prevent the dawn of a new Dark Ages are constantly being undercut by American attitudes. "See, they just want to kill us," say the jihadists, basing their remarks on the fact that we are killing them.

And so we create new enemies. They may not have been against us in 1999, but all that has changed now. It's amazing how touchy people get when they are detained at airports. And when you start bombing a country in order to save it, people are so quick to take it the wrong way. And when you describe the bombing as a "crusade," people get all nervous and excited.

Yes, I know, George Bush apparently did not understand the origin of the word "crusade." He was using it as a sports-page term, like "Auburn is on a crusade to defeat the University of Alabama." I think it would be nice to have a president who did understand the meaning of "crusade" without having to be told, but that is apparently because I do not understand that faith and family are important.

We are being lied to more or less constantly by our government. That's not a secret or anything; indeed, commissions appointed by the government reach that conclusion almost weekly. And yet that's OK, because at least faith and family are being defended.

See, there's the Defense of Marriage Act. Don't you want your marriage defended? Of course, I've never met a gay person who wanted to attack my marriage. And it's exactly that sort of smart-ass remark that proves how little I understand about faith and family. Because, well, there's no "because" in faith. That's why it's faith.

I am going to put my faith in the self-correcting mechanisms built into the Constitution. I am going to wait it out and pray that my friends do not get injured. And I may build a little room in the basement.

[a tad More ...]
New Splendid. Forwarded as appropriate.
bcnu,
Mikem

Eine Leute. Eine Welt. Ein F\ufffdhrer.
(Just trying to be accepted in the New America)
New Love that last bit:
"I am going to put my faith in the self-correcting mechanisms built into the Constitution. I am going to wait it out and pray that my friends do not get injured. And I may build a little room in the basement."

Imric's Tips for Living
  • Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
  • Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
  • Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.


Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
 
 
New This was the argument my boss used with Pro-Lifers.
During the campaign he got into heated arguments with family members on just this point - if you're pro-life, why support a pResident whose policies are causing more abortions?
bcnu,
Mikem

Eine Leute. Eine Welt. Ein F\ufffdhrer.
(Just trying to be accepted in the New America)
New I had that argument
Except mine was about The Last Temptation of Christ, and it was with some stranger picketting out front. I asked if he'd actually seen it. He said no. I told him that I hadn't either, but I'd heard it really wasn't very good. And that I hadn't been planning on seeing it. The only reason I was considering it at all was the protests. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

He wasn't getting it.

So I told him, "If you agree to go home and stop picketting, I'll keep walking home, like I had been. If you decide to stay and keep picketting, I'll fork over my money and go see it right now. Then I'll come out and give you a report. Now: do you really want to keep people from seeing this movie, or are you just trying to display how pious you are?"

He stayed, so I went to see it. And it wasn't all that good. Not all that shodking, either.
===

Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
New OTOH, the music was fantastic.
IMhO, of course.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
New What, those were the PRO-jeebus folks boycotting it?
I'd'a thought it'd be the *Anti*-religionists; the impression one got from the meeja blitherings about it (at this remove) was that all in all, it was much more a force propagandazing FOR jeezmoidery than possibly denigrating the same by being dogmatically incorrect.

More a case of the pious -- *being* Mel and his merry moviemakers -- uppsetting the rest of us, than anybody non-pious upsetting the pious, I thought.

Seems I underestimated the pious' capacity for being offended.

Live and learn.


   [link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
New You're thinking of a different movie.
[link|http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095497/|Scorsese] versus [link|http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335345/|Gibson]. Drew was talking about the former.

:-)

Cheers,
Scott.
     Abortion on the rise under Bush admin - (tuberculosis) - (8)
         Heh.. a splendid companion for - (Ashton) - (2)
             Splendid. Forwarded as appropriate. -NT - (mmoffitt)
             Love that last bit: - (imric)
         This was the argument my boss used with Pro-Lifers. - (mmoffitt) - (4)
             I had that argument - (drewk) - (3)
                 OTOH, the music was fantastic. - (jake123)
                 What, those were the PRO-jeebus folks boycotting it? - (CRConrad) - (1)
                     You're thinking of a different movie. - (Another Scott)

Every problem that humanity has ever encountered throughout history can be traced back to Gary in accounting.
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