Comments on: A Sharp Reversal: Commentary from the Center for Reproductive Rights

By: Ben Kennedy

Ben Kennedy — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 19:01:54 +0000

Accordingly, the decision opens the door for legislatures to dictate medical treatment in virtually any area of medical practice. By holding that legislatures are free to regulate whenever such differences of opinion exist, the Court has left Americans with politicians rather than doctors making medical decisions for them.

To follow up on Jacques’s point, every state has one or more state license boards that regulate who can practice medicine. We also have the FDA that determine what drugs can be made and sold, what medical devices can be sold, and how they are used. We regulate the colleges that teach medicine. Nearly every aspect of our medical treatment is strictly regulated by politicians!

By: Jason Harrow

Jason Harrow — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:44:08 +0000

Bonnie Scott Jones adds the following:

Those interested in the statistic cited in my commentary (that one-third of American women will obtain abortions in their lifetime), may find the source on the Guttmacher Institute website, which states the following: “About half of American women have experienced an unintended pregnancy, and at current rates more than one-third will have had an abortion by age 45.” See http://guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

Bonnie Scott Jones, Senior Attorney, Center for Reproductive Rights

By: Fred Heutte

Fred Heutte — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:50:43 +0000

Mr. Berlove, perhaps people of the male persuasion should not draw conclusions so quickly about statistics concerning female health issues which which we are not as familiar. In any case, the answers are very close at hand. The “one third” reference is a widely quoted statistic from a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute concluding that about one-third of all American women will have had an abortion by age 45. http://www.guttmacher.org/media/presskits/2005/06/28/abortionoverview.html This in turn appears to be based on cohort analysis from sources such as the National Center for Health Statistics and summarized elsewhere within CDC. See for example http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm Best wishes for your further research efforts.

By: kathy gill

kathy gill — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 06:36:56 +0000

To Taylor Reynolds:

Please re-read the statistic. It is not “one-third of women living today” — it’s one-third of women who get pregnant.

According to a peer reviewed journal, it was one-in-three in 2003.

Finer LB and Henshaw SK, Abortion incidence and services in the United States in 2000, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2003, 35(1):6–15.

Another statistic: “The abortion rate is the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in a one-year period. In 2003, the abortion rate was 20.8, meaning that about 2% of all U.S. women aged 15–44 had an abortion.”

http://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-know/references.html#ref25

By: Jacob Berlove

Jacob Berlove — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 04:58:05 +0000

“Granting certiorari — despite the fact that all three appellate courts to consider the Act applied the same controlling precedent and came to the same holding — and overruling a recent ruling disfavored by the new majority.”
Lawrence v. Texas can reasonably be said to have done pretty much the same thing, and all members of the dissent in this case were in the majority in Lawrence humm… Seems like the need to keep with recently decided precedent largely correlates with how strongly you feel that the precedent is wrong, and isn’t a function of any one group of justices. So I’m baffled by the complaint here that Roberts and Alito didn’t give due deference to recent precedent when it seems that all members of the court share that affinity . I concede that Stenberg is substantially closer in time to CarhartII than Lawrence was to its predecessor. But the difference hardly seems significant enough to cast members of today’s or actually yesterday’s, at this point) majority as uniquely guilty of being willing to squarely overturn a recently decided precedent.

Mr. Reynolds,
The “one third” statistic, at the moment, strikes me as being just another example of questionable statistics that are put to use by interest groups in attempt to convince the public that the class they claim is being treated unfairly, or that deserves more attention or funding, is much larger than that envisioned by the average Joe. Perhaps, however, the statistic counts morning after pills as abortions, a view that a sizeable percentage of anti-abortion proponents share. I would be surprised if one-third of American women qualified even under this definition, but the statistic is at least more plausible if given my suggested construction.

By: Taylor Reynolds

Taylor Reynolds — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 04:07:34 +0000

Could Ms. Jones offer a citation to her statistic that “one-third of American women” will obtain an abortion in their lifetime?

It seems reasonable to believe that more abortions are obtained than reported. But I find it completely implausible that approximately 50 million American women obtain abortions at some point in their lifetime, as the statistic suggests.

With some well-grounded proof — i.e., a government figure or other solid statistical evidence, not a product of some interest group’s erroneous extrapolation — I’d be willing to believe it. But on its own, the claim is so tenuous that it undermines the credibility of Ms. Jones’s dire predictions.

It is no wonder that the post takes the unusual course of preemptively defending itself against suggestions of “alarmis[m].”

By: Jacques McKenzie

Jacques McKenzie — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:21:57 +0000

If this view is sincerely held, wouldn’t one stridently oppose mandatory HPV vaccinations?