jelun

GENDER
8 Myths That Fuel the Assault on Abortion Rights
No, abortion does not cause infertility or breast cancer, and women don't regret having abortions.
By Kali Holloway / AlterNet July 25, 2015
Print
143 COMMENTS
The ink is barely dry on the bill Scott Walker signed outlawing abortion for Wisconsin women, including victims of rape and incest, after 20 weeks of pregnancy. In Georgia, Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter is trying to introduce legislation that would halt federal funds for Planned Parenthood after a deceptive and misleading “sting” video went viral. In June, murder charges against Kenlissia Jones, who terminated her pregnancy using pills bought on the Internet, were finally dropped after much public outcry. And Paul Joseph Wieland, a local Missouri state representative and current holder of the Most Embarrassing Dad of the Year Award, is trying to get a court to block his adult daughters’ insurance from providing them with birth control. Adult daughters, you guys.

I’m leaving a lot out. But even with just a few examples plucked from hundreds, it’s clear that abortion foes are coming at women from all sides, actively doing everything they can to stymie reproductive justice using any means at their disposal. One third of American women will have abortions in their lifetime, and they currently face obstacles rivaled only by those in place during the pre-Roe v. Wade era. The campaign against abortion is riddled with both mis- and disinformation, or what in plainspeak might be referred to as “myths” and “lies.”

So let’s clear up a least a few of these. There are so many demonstrably false "facts” being generated by anti-choicers that a point-by-point rebuttal is impossible to compile into a single list. But we can tackle at least some of the more popular untruths. To that end, here is a list of the seven biggest myths about abortion.

1. Myth: Women regret their abortions.

Concern trolling is one of anti-choicers' favorite methods for attempting to shut down arguments in favor of reproductive rights. The fallacious suggestion is that women who have elective abortions suffer painful psychological consequences ranging from depression to anxiety to guilt to social isolation (aka the Won’t someone think of the women? argument). But in study after study, when women who have had abortions are allowed to speak for themselves (and really, they should know better than anyone), the opposite turns out to be true.

It’s extremely rare for women to feel post-abortion regret, and when they do, they still identify their choice as having been the right one. A 2000 study conducted by UC Santa Barbara found a full two years after having abortions, “72 percent of women were satisfied with their decision; 69 percent said they would have the abortion again; 72 percent reported more benefit than harm from their abortion; and 80 percent were not depressed.” Only 1 percent reported PTSD, compared with 11 percent of “women of the same age in the general population.” Another 2013 study found 90 percent of women reported feelings of relief following an abortion, while “those denied the abortion felt more regret and anger...and less relief and happiness.”

A three-year study from just this month with an assessment of factors including age, race, education and socioeconomic background found, across the board, “95 percent of participants reported abortion was the right decision, with the typical participant having a >99 percent chance of reporting the abortion decision was right for her.”

2. Myth: Abortions are unsafe.

The myth that abortion is a dangerous procedure proliferates in anti-choice circles, and is propagated by the same. It’s a fairly pernicious lie that is intended to make women considering an abortion literally fear for their lives. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, a 2012 study assessing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Guttmacher Institute found that actually giving birth is far likelier to kill a woman than having an abortion. In the words of researchers, “risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion.” First-trimester abortions have a complication rateof less than .05 percent, making it one of the safest procedures available. Having a colonoscopy puts one's life more at risk than an abortion by a factor of 40 times. Timemagazine notedlast year that the CDC reported, “.67 deaths per 100,000 abortions” between 2003 and 2009, a year in which eight women died as a result of the procedure.

Certainly, we would all prefer it if there were zero deaths associated with terminating a pregnancy, but there seems to be bias in the reactions to those deaths — at least among anti-choice advocates — and fatalities resulting from other causes. To quote Time, “compare [those numbers] with fatal reactions to penicillin, which occur in 1 case per 50-100,000 courses. And what about Viagra? According to the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, it has a death rate of 5 per 100,000 prescriptions. But you don’t find legislators calling for a ban on Viagra."

3. Myth: Abortion causes breast cancer.

Although this claim has been thoroughly disproven by a little thing called science, anti-choicers continue to use it to prop up their reasons for opposing safe, legal abortion. In most cases, they ignore the glut of research by well-respected medical groups (including studies by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School) in favor of studies that fail to properly employ the scientific method in order to arrive at the conclusion they prefer. (For a great, detailed explanation of the many fronts on which one of their most referenced studies fails, check out this Joyce Arthur pieceon the RH Reality Check blog.)

The Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancerat Oxford College in England, which examined the results of 53 different studies of roughly 83,000 women with breast cancer conducted in 16 countries, determined that “the totality of worldwide epidemiological evidence indicates that pregnancies ending as either spontaneous or induced abortions do not have adverse effects on women’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.”


4. Myth: Abortion, particularly multiple abortions, can cause infertility.

This is, apparently, a belief that grew out of some now-dated ideas once rooted in truth. A 2010 Jezebel article investigating infertility and abortion found that procedural changes in how abortions are performed explain why the connection no longer exists. More specifically, while abortions up until the late 1960s used D&C (or dilation and curettage) to terminate pregnancies, by the early 1970s, vacuum aspiration became — and today remains — the predominate abortion method. The reduction in scarring and other complications that resulted from this shift helped eliminate infertility as a risk of abortion.

Ann Davis, associate professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center and consulting medical director of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health told Jezebel, "There is no impact of repeat abortion on fertility." This is echoed in a Guttmacher Institute survey of scientific studies on the topic which found that “vacuum aspiration...poses virtually no long-term risks of future fertility-related problems such as infertility.”

5. Myth: Abortions are happening more than ever.

Women are having fewer legal abortions than they’ve had in 25 years. The number of legal abortions performed across the United States each year has been dwindling since the 1980s, and is currently down 12 percent from as recently as 2010.

http://www.alternet.org/gender/8-myths-fuel-assault-abortion-rights?sc=fb

Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

...myths are what make the world go 'round. Especially for clowns that don't agree with the facts. This isn't going to change anyone's mind because faith healers are still popular.

jelun

I don't do this to change minds, I do it to try to keep people honest.

Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

Honesty starts from within.

I am not a fan of abortion, but my wife miscarried and so it changed my mind.

I am also not a fan of someone (groups) who forces a female to have a child, so that she can spend the rest of her life suffering for some bad choices (assuming she wasn't raped).

I don't think anyone that complains about abortion was ever confronted with it, so they don't understand and just go along with the herd...makes them feel like they are respected God or something.

vernon

i hope you dont think anything this commie idiot says is fact.

She Wolf Loc: Currently Georgia

What confuses me the most on the issue of Abortion is:

How can you be pro-life and want to take away all the social programs which will help the child you forced the woman to have?

What gives a government the right to force a woman to have a child and then state it has have no responsibility for the well being of the child?

If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. Stop trying to force your morality on others. For me personally abortion would not be an option. However, I do not have the right to force my opinion on others. I always consider the fact that as a human being, I could be wrong. I do not need nor do I want decisions made for me.

jelun

None of it is logical, that is the problem.
If there were any logic involved on the anti-abortion side the debate would have ended decades ago.
It is all about those horrible women having sex, if that were not the case wouldn't these judgmental sons of guns ask just once "why isn't the man paying for these procedures?"
Have you ever seen that question asked?

Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

How can you be pro life and eventually the police kill the very children that you forced single mother's raise...?

How can anyone with critical thinking believe that incarcerating drug dealers and spending billions on a anti-drug program, violation people's civil rights for a plant...?

How can someone say that atheists hunger for blood and world domination, when there are an inordinate number of Christian's in the military, in the officer ranks?

...so very true...hypocrisy at it's finest.

vernon

I'm against abortion but the problem i have with it is using my tax money for this murder.obama told us the feds would not pay for it and this was just another lie.

jelun

You forget, we are aware that you take much more than you give.
What federal taxes do you actually want us to believe you pay?

vernon

you can bet its more than you pay.

jelun

Yeah? Prove it.
What you pay is not the question, it is the balance of what you pay and what you get.

vernon

im not going to put out my personal info for you or anyone else on opp.

vernon

And just what gives you the idea you know anything about me or my finances.
now tell us how much you make and have you paid anything on your student loans or any other debts.

jelun

I know that you are older than dirt because you have told us that.
I can surmise from that you didn't put as much into private retirement as we do today. That means that the amount you spend in taxes on booze is greater than the rest of the the federal taxes you get hit for.
It is what you use in Medicare that I figure tips the balance.
Those meds you are on are expensive.