Dangerous Womb

LMILLER111 said:

I'm interested in the thoughts

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okay. you first.

I'll go. It was an ad geared at shaming black women for their reproductive choices while doing nothing to help them socially or economically.

It also used a photo of a child against the ToS of the image provider. Her mother was not happy. http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/moving_america_news/26439&page=4

LMILLER111 said:

I think that the stats re: African American abortion rates indicate some kind of problem on a social level.

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I think it would be fair that race is correlated with some 'problems on a social level'. The solution to which tends to involve provision of education and health services.

Count me behind times. I was not aware that figures were kept and made public on who had abortions. Who provided these facts? I thought this stuff was private. .............wonders away....mumbles to self.

LMILLER111 said:

I just saw the article where it discusses that african americans make up 13% of the population, but account for almost 40% of the abortions.

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That's not accurate. Here's the accurate data.

And abortions are most prevalent among the poorest Americans, which is a group among which people who self-identify as black and African American are highly overrepresented.

It's not a complex issue. Poor women make up a disproportionately high share of the people who get abortions each year, and the population of people who live in poverty is demographically different from the population at large. If poor people had better access to health care and contraception, the number of unplanned pregnancies would decrease (as well as the number of terminations that were prompted by serious birth defects relating to poor prenatal care or nutrition).

The money spent on shaming people via billboards would have been better spent on providing health care to women living in poverty.

LMILLER111 said:

Abortion as a method of just plain birth control, however, is not something I'll ever be okay with.

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Technically, all abortion is birth control. Perhaps late birth control, but birth control nonetheless. The notion that some women never, ever use any other birth control and just go get a monthly abortion is a silly one, perpetuated by those who are against abortion.

I don't agree that repeat abortions (this is what's typically meant by the phrase "abortion as birth control") are any more "immoral" than one-time abortion, but then again, I don't believe abortion itself is immoral. On that, I'm sure we won't agree.

LMILLER111 said:

I think that the stats re: African American abortion rates indicate some kind of problem on a social level. Either these girls are not being taught safe-sex, or there is a disproportionate rate of abuse, or something else, but it warrants being looked into.

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The real story is in pregnancy and birth rates. The birth rate among US black women is 71.2/1000 while it's only 59.6/1000 for whites.

Higher pregnancy rates are going to also mean higher abortion rates. Throw in economic issues, and the fact that upwards of 72% of black women giving birth are single, it's not hard to imagine why their abortion rate is higher than that of whites. More babies = more economic hardship. Pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing are very expensive.

I'm all for educating everyone about safe birth control, including abortion.

I think the ad was inherently racist.

I had a window open with sources for my stats, and I accidentally closed it. Honest! I will try to dig them up and insert a link. ETA. Ah, here it is!

CACTUSWENDY said:

Count me behind times. I was not aware that figures were kept and made public on who had abortions. Who provided these facts? I thought this stuff was private. .............wonders away....mumbles to self.

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Demographic data collection doesn't mean a lack of individual privacy. There's a difference between saying "At Jones Memorial Hospital, 2,000 women had live births in 2009 and here are the demographics of that group; 450 women had terminations in 2009 and here are the demographics of that group" and giving the names of individuals and the medical procedures they underwent.

It's important for medical personnel to collect demographic data for lots of reasons, including epidemiology.

The idea that there are people in the US who use abortion as their only method of birth control is as outlandish as the idea that there are people who use root canals as their only method of dental care.

Yes, there have been times and places in history when contraception was not available and the only possible method of birth control was abortion (some pre-Pill eras in the USSR when rubber was in short supply, for instance) but that isn't the case now. People prefer to use contraception rather than having surgery, just as people prefer to brush and floss rather than having root canals. Sometimes preventative care isn't enough, though.

See, you can be as educated as you like about birth control, but in a country where people can be denied access to birth control by their only local pharmacy due to the "conscience clause" (now revoked I hear? Yay!), plenty of women who would choose birth control if they could get their choices taken away from them.

Being from the other side of the pond I am not completely clued up on USA contraceptive issues. Here in the UK people under 25 years old can get free condoms, contraceptive implants, pills and injections, abortions, including the morning after pill, and young people do not need to notify or get parental permission to go on the pill etc. What sort of preventative options do low income people in the USA get?

Ah, see here towns and villages are so much smaller and resources closer together. Family planning clinics are generally only ever a 30 min walk away unless you live in a village out in the sticks, but even then you can get a bus into a town usually within a 30min travel distance.

IMHO, and this is UPA, I don't think anyone would choose to have an abortion where the option to not need one in the first place is there and accessible.

I'm lucky with the easy access we have here. I've only ever had one scare when a condom failed, and I just went to the pharmacy and picked up a morning after pill. Since then I've had implanon implants and have had them replaced gratis every three years by my local clinic. Regular (also free) pregnancy tests just in case and bish bash bosh, no problems and as close to no risk as you can get with sex.

Following from the logic of the ad: having an abortion is the right thing to do as it removes the fetus from the hostile environment in the womb.

...

Seriously though, this whole thread is singing "troll!" to me.

Yes, those family planning clinics, many of which are run by a groups whose budget is in danger of being largely obliterated. Which is unlikely to help the situation.

Hmmm... my trollometer isn't going off, but I do think the ad is in incredibly poor taste, not to mention seems more to me to be blaming the women for the need to get an abortion than offering any actual solutions.

CACTUSWENDY said:

Count me behind times. I was not aware that figures were kept and made public on who had abortions. Who provided these facts? I thought this stuff was private. .............wonders away....mumbles to self.

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Medical statistics are also gathered concerning what demographics have more heart attacks, strokes, car accidents, certain types of cancers, etc.

LMILLER111 said:

it probably would have been better just to leave race out of it, and they probably only added that for shock value.

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Shame value, IMO.

LMILLER111 said:

Abortion as a method of just plain birth control, however, is not something I'll ever be okay with.

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What do you mean by this?

I hear this all the time, and I'm never quite sure what it means.

What do you mean by this?

I hear this all the time, and I'm never quite sure what it means.

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I always assumed when people say stuff like that, that they imagine people going out and purposefully not trying any condoms or pills etc because "nah I'll just have an abortion, mate". Which... to me suggests the people who think this really don't know what an abortion actually entails...

BunnyMaz said:

I always assumed when people say stuff like that, that they imagine people going out and purposefully not trying any condoms or pills etc because "nah I'll just have an abortion, mate". Which... to me suggests the people who think this really don't know what an abortion actually entails...

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Or how much it costs.

This is what it sounds like to me, too. But I have to wonder where that idea came from. You couldn't possibly know that this was why someone was having an abortion unless they told you, "instead of condoms or the pill, I just use abortion."