Observations of the Senate Hearings

I listened to the live cast of the TX Senate hearings yesterday where I could. While I do not believe it will actually change any minds, I am glad that the Senate at least allowed all who signed up to speak, unlike the House proceedings last week. There was a variety of testimony on both sides, with some providing compelling, sometimes heart wrenching, testimony, while others left only confusion in their wake.

The supporters of the bill fell into three categories. The first essentially stated “These senators say this will bill will make the procedure more safe, so why not support that?”. These were the minority, but also appeared to be the least ideologically driven. The second, more prominent group included the folks stating “Women cannot be trusted to make their own decisions, so the government should make it for them”. The last group stated very plainly “abortion is against my religion and any bill that makes it more restrictive should be passed”. 

There is little you can say to the third group that will make a difference. I will, none the less, point out that if you make any religious argument for a secular law, you’re doing it wrong. I will also point out that if your ultimate goal is to lower the occurrence of abortion, then making it more restrictive will not do that. You can review my prior posts for reasons and ways of actually decreasing abortion rates, but I’ve found that “true believers” do not tend to be pragmatic. If they see something as “morally wrong” by their religion, they want it to have the force of the law against it regardless of the damage that would cause. Luckily these folks, while numerous and passionate, are not the majority anymore.

                It was slightly depressing to see just how many women fell into the second category. Over and over I heard testimony that stated “I had an abortion, and I regret my choice, so I want the law to ensure no one else has the right to make that choice”. I empathize with the women who went through traumatic experiences, especially those few who were forced by a parent or significant other into making a decision they didn’t truly want. That being said, taking away other people’s choice won’t fix that. There are people who regret having kids at the age they did. There are people who regret giving children up for adoption. There are people that regret nothing no matter their choice. It is up to each individual to decide what is best for them and no blanket answer can fit everyone’s needs. Everyone makes choices they regret at some point, but that is part of being human. We learn from those so that we do not make the same mistakes again ourselves, and share our experiences with others so that they can use it to make their own decisions. We should not take those choices away. After all, if you feel your fellow women are incapable of making that choice, what other choices should you give up? Should we do arranged marriages so that you do not have to regret your choice of spouses? It’s not unheard of, most commonly in societies where women are viewed as incapable of making decisions for themselves.

                The first group seems the most misled. These are the folks I hope will actually alter their views of the bill once they read it in its entirety. I heard many statements such as “all it takes is some money and these clinics can stay open. Surely as much money as the abortion industry makes, it will spend the money on these upgrades, right?” These folks mean well but haven’t actually read what is involved here. For starters, there has not been an abortion related death in Texas since 2008, and complications in abortions happen at a rate of 1/14^th the occurrence of natural child birth. With these well-established facts, why are we spending millions of dollars to push this bill through? With so many actual issues facing the Texas public, why are we adding regulations to an industry that for the past five years has failed to post one single mortality?

           “Yes,” some readers will say, “but they could still be even more safe, couldn’t they? Why fight that?” It is true that  abortion clinics can absolutely increase their hallway width, the size of the procedure room where they often just give a woman a pill, add a specific janitorial closet and even add a men’s locker room (though how this will help increase abortion safety is beyond me). But what it cannot control is whether or not a hospital will grant them admitting privileges. The bill requires that in order to stay open, a clinic’s doctor must have these privileges. It does not, however, require hospitals to grant them. As many hospitals are run by religious groups with their own bias against the procedure, those hospitals are not likely to grant these privileges. Even state run facilities have become very reticent to hand out privileges due to a variety of factors ranging from liability, local government restrictions, or even personal bias on behalf the hospital’s president. This one regulation, by many accounts, stands to shut down most of the currently operating clinics in the state, and short of opening up their own hospital there will be absolutely nothing these clinics can do to stop it. One needs only look at other states that have already implemented similar restrictions to see the aftermath. State after state has seen similar restrictions with most of their facilities closing. A recent report by Guttmacher Institute shows that in the past four years, over 1200 of the nation’s 3000 facilities have closed. Given that many of these facilities are also the only affordable option for women to obtain family planning, birth control, STD testing, and cancer screening, this is a huge loss that is growing worse. If even that fails to convince you of the true purpose of this bill, I would point you to the tweet by Lt. Governor David Dewhurst showing a map of the facilities expected to close with this bill along with a statement reading  "We fought to pass (Senate Bill 5) thru the Senate last night, & this is why!"

Abortion Arguements by the Numbers

Here’s a nifty fact for you. Nobody *likes* abortions. You don’t have to take my word for that, of course. Go out and survey as many women as you like, and I would be willing to bet that the number of them that say that getting an abortion is on their bucket list would be statistically nonexistent.

Yet events occur beyond people’s control where they deem it necessary to have one. The reasons vary greatly, from economic hardship to medical necessity. Each woman has her own reason for doing something she would not have chosen to otherwise do if she could have avoided the situation altogether, and as each decision is personal, the “why” is not the point of this article. The “how” is.

In 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that women had the right to a legal abortion up until the point where the “viability” or the point where if born the child could survive outside of the womb. This is typically 28 weeks though in rare circumstances could range back to 24 weeks. Since then, opponents of abortions rights have worked to roll back or, where possible, eliminate legal abortions.

The reasons are many but most hinge on the idea that abortion is an abomination and should be removed from society. Here is the catch 22 we as a nation find ourselves in, though; outlawing abortions does not stop abortions, it mere stops legal abortions. The World Health Organization collects data from all over the world on all manner of medical procedures, abortion included. In a world where the internet puts that data at our finger tips, I would invite those who disagree that a choice to have a legal abortion should exist to determine *why* they believe that and then look to see if the facts back up their choice of methods. In most cases, I think you would find that targeting the abortion right itself isn’t the best method for achieving the goal of lowering the abortion rate. Let’s look at some of the common reasons given, and why they don’t necessarily match up with reality.

Making Abortion Illegal would stop abortions

With abortion legal in the US, roughly 20 out of every 1000 women have one. Western Europe has less restrictions in general than the US on abortion, and roughly 12 out of every 1000 women have an abortion there. South Africa, the only state in Africa to legalize abortion, has roughly 15 per 1000. If making abortions illegal stopped abortions, you would expect the WHO’s statistics for abortions in places where it was illegal to be far fewer than places like Europe where it’s readily available, much less the US or South Africa where it’s more highly regulated. This isn’t the case.

In the rest of Africa, an average of 29 of every 1000 child bearing women get abortions. In Latin America, 32 of every 1000 receive it. Making the procedures illegal shows to have no actual bearing on decreasing the occurrences of the procedure. It merely makes them more dangerous.

We need to raise regulations for safety measures.

This is the commonly cited argument for the current round of restrictions to abortion access. Why would we not want safer procedures, right? Who could possibly object to trying to protect women? The sad fact is, the statistics again do not support the supposed results. There is a 0.3% chance of complications from an abortion. To put that in perspective, there is a 1% chance of complications from taking an aspirin. Than means you’re 3 times more likely to have issues with taking an over-the-counter pill than you are with a legal abortion under current regulations. So as you can see, we’re already starting with an extremely low rate of danger, but better safe than sorry, right? Again the facts would say wrong. The current round of legislation is designed so that it lengthens the time it would take for many women to get an abortion. An ultra-sound law recently passed in Texas and other states means that if a woman does not wish to be vaginally violated by a state ordered ultrasound she must wait until the fetus is recognizable by a transabdomonal ultra-sound, which is typically 8 weeks.  Coincidently, this marks the end of when performing an abortion is at its most safe. Abortions prior to 8 weeks literally hold a one in one million chance of fatality. Abortions up to 20 weeks become slightly more dangerous, with one death out of every 29,000 abortions. 21+ weeks, of course, increases the risk further to one death our of every 11,000 procedures (still safer, however, than child birth which holds a 1.29% fatality rate). Now, to put all of this in prospective, let’s find a common denominator for all of these numbers to see how they match up together. Since our largest number is a million, we’ll go with it.

Number of death per 1,000,000 procedures:
Abortion under 8 Weeks - 1
Abortion up to 20 Weeks - 34
Abortion 21+ Weeks - 91
Child Birth - 12,900

If you were looking to make something safer, why would abortion be your target? And if you truly wished it to be safer, making it more readily available would be a better choice than making it more restrictive. Merely delaying the procedure, as the current round of laws do, easily makes the procedure 34 times more dangerous. And forcing a woman to carry the baby to term that she doesn’t want astronomically increases the likelihood of her death over allowing her to have the abortion she sought to begin with. Incidentally, the current infant mortality rate in the US is 0.615%. So out of those 1,000,000 births, 6,150 of those children would have died. That seems a far better place to focus our attempts at safety.

Truly Reducing Abortions

So are we a hopeless cause? Is there no way of really reducing the rate of abortions? The statistics actually say that there are. Europe holds the distinction of having one of the highest and lowest abortion rates in the world. Western Europe has a rate of roughly 12 out of every 1000 women, where Eastern Europe has a rate closer to 43 per 1000. What is the primary difference between the two? Education and Birth Control. Western Europe pushes formal sexual education and has birth control  affordable and readily available to most women. Eastern Europe tends to rely more on traditional and less accurate forms of birth control. The results are pretty stark and logical. Many abortions come from unwanted babies. Teach women how to avoid getting pregnant and give them the tools to do so, and you reduce abortions. Keep them ignorant, or make dependable contraceptives hard to get, and you create a recipe for desperation that will not look to laws for permission.

If your goal is to reduce abortions, then the facts say that the easiest way to do that is through education and contraception. If your goal is to make abortion safer, then the facts say that reducing barriers to a woman getting an abortion when she is going to anyway is the way to go. If you still insist on pushing an agenda that raises barriers to abortion without providing education and contraception to women, then it’s time to admit you really do not care about the women or children themselves, and that you are more likely pursuing control over the female body by stating that if she has sex she will be forced to endure consequences that are not medically necessary merely because you wish it to be so. If that is your goal, at least be honest with yourself and the public at large.

Politics in Texas

I hadn't really intended this site for politics, but the Texas govenor and legislature have done many things lately which make me feel like I should lend my voice in every way I can in opposing them, so here goes:

Texas has a legend which you may have heard of: The Alamo.

Let’s discuss a very brief history lesson: Back when Texas was still part of Mexico, a large group of settlers within it decided they did not want to be part of that union anymore. They chose instead to break off to form their own country. As one could expect when a section of a country announces its intent to take its land and resources and go, Mexico object, and it dispatched a mighty military under General Santa Anna to bring the separatists to heel and keep Mexico whole. A group of these separatists, sporting some well-known names at the time, decided to hole up in a local church mission known as Alamo.

This is where History might have taken a different turn. Santa Anna knew these rebels were sealed away in the grounds of this old church and had a choice. He could have set siege to the grounds, cut off their supply lines, and demanded the surrender of separatist leaders in exchange for the safe passage of those others within. With little hope of fighting their way through enemy lines and dwindling supplies, these leaders might even have been forced to give in, where they could have been returned to the capital to face justice for their crimes against the state. Had this occurred, it is entirely possible that those who really did not care much either way if Texas was under Mexico or its own leadership may have taken the easier path and just allowed Mexico to retain control. As history is written by the victors, ours could be very different.

That, however, was not the choice Santa Anna made. Santa Anna was full of righteous anger. These people were taking the land of his countrymen and deserved to be made example of. With overwhelming odds on his side, he chose to use what could be described as a vulgar display of power to crush and execute all those who stood in his way. The intent was to show that any who stood against what he felt was right would not be tolerated.

The problem with using examples, however is that it is difficult to control the lessons learned from them. Rather than being cowered, folks that were on the fence became incensed. As stories of the atrocities committed at the Alamo spread far and wide, those who would have remained neutral instead joined the opposition, and those already with the opposition renewed their passion with a fervor that would have otherwise been non-existent. “Remember the Alamo” became the rallying cry that turned a battle won into a war lost.

Now, close to two hundred years later, General Santa Anna’s righteousness resides in our Governor Rick Perry. His Lieutenant David Dewhurst is leading the charge to pass a law that they believe just, but that the majority of Texans oppose. They could have compromised, passed something most people didn’t like but that they were willing to put up with, and history would continue to be uninteresting. Instead they have chosen to use a vulgar display of power. They have suspended the senate rules that state 75% must be in agreement to bring a bill forward. They have allowed their supporters to speak while denying the same rights to those who oppose them. They have broken senate rules, made illogical and unsupportable decisions, and even threatened to arrest those who oppose them, making it clear that those who stand against what they feel is right will not be tolerated.

In doing so, people who would have otherwise stood on the fence, are joining the opposition. Those who were on the other side have renewed their passion with a fervor not seen in the Texas Democratic party in close to two decades. It is nearly impossible for those supporting women’s rights to win this battle, but in losing the battle they may very well win the war – pushing Texas from a Republican stronghold back to the Democratic.

It is said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps if Rick Perry and his followers hadn’t spent so much time cutting education, they may have avoided this.