Hooray For The Lancet (again)

StrikingABlowAgainstThePropaganda
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The Lancet has done it again.

Once again they have published studies which demonstrate that prohibitive lifestyle 'Wars' do not work.

And this time we're not talking about the 'War On Drugs'.

Instead, we're talking about the 'War On Abortion'.

From their Oct 13th editorial (you need to register but it's free, and it's worth more than a thousand subscriptions to things like People, Us, Oprah, Martha Stewart's Shrewing and/or a lifetime supply of Whitehouse.gov [anti-free]press releases*):

"Among the interventions that have a significant effect on maternal mortality is access to safe abortion. Gilda Sedgh and colleagues present new findings on global rates and trends of all abortions. They found that despite the worldwide abortion rate slowly declining between 1995 and 2003, the unsafe abortion rate was essentially unchanged. The authors make a clear and compelling case for better access to contraception as well as safe and legal abortion services as a core tenet of improving the health of women worldwide. Indeed, as Carine Ronsmans and colleagues show, access to safe abortions is among the factors that have led to a substantial decrease in maternal mortality in Bangladesh during the past 30 years."


In other words, access to contraception and legal abortions save lives.

Which, of course, should be, in and of itself, enough for every thinking, feeling and compassionate person in the world.

But wait, there's more.

Like this, which is taken directly from the published study:

The findings presented here indicate that unrestrictive abortion laws do not predict a high incidence of abortion, and by the same token, highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with low abortion incidence.

In other words, having legal abortions does not mean that a society will have more abortions, or vice versa. In fact, the lowest abortion rates are associated open access. Again, taken directly from the study:

The abortion rate per 1000 women was lowest in western Europe (12), and was also quite low in northern and southern Europe (17–18) and Oceania (17). In these geographic areas, most abortions were legal and abortion incidence had been low for decades.

Taken together, these findings make it almost impossible for any reasonable person not to conclude that legalized abortion saves lives without increasing abortion rates.

So, given that, how could any reasonable person be against a woman's right to choose?

Especially if, as Pink recently so eloquently asked recently, that person has a daughter.



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*And/Or a Bushelfull of Fishwrap known as 'The Journal of Global Drug Policy' which, of course, is funded by the U.S. Dept of Justice and/or HarperCon re-directs from real government information websites (see post directly below).
Thanks to Chet for bringing this up and wondering when the wingnut whirlitzer will start to crack the push-back-prop-a-whip.
Here's a link to the institute that did the actual study.


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