Interesting Links for 16-07-2015

[andrewducker]

• No, the UK government is not about to ban Whatsapp
  • (tags: encryption internet UK )
• 95% of women are happier after they get an abortion
  • (tags: abortion psychology )
• 7 activities that will make you happier
  • (tags: happiness )
• Sir Ian McKellen does an AMA!
  • (tags: reddit IanMcKellen )

Original post on Dreamwidth - there are

Comments

[atreic]

Gah, that abortion article reaks of bad stats! '95% of women think they made the right choice in their situation' is not the same as '95% of women are happier after their abortion'. And don't even get me started on how _anyone_ with a brain can take a graph that shows 'women are less likely to be depressed/anxious 2 years after having an abortion than 8 days after having an abortion' and try to make a causal narrative that 'abortion precedes an immediate and long-term plunge in feelings of anxiety and depression.' Particularly not when the graph shows _exactly_ the same pattern for women who are _denied_ an abortion - notice they're not so quick to write 'being denied an abortion precedes an immediate and long-term plunge in feelings of anxiety and depression.' but the curves are almost identical.

'what is clear is that women denied abortions experience more anxiety and depression'> Really? I mean, it seems trivially likely to be true, but the curves on the graph are almost on top of each other, and I can't find any sample size or confidence intervals...

I mean, it's like saying 'women are happier after their partner dies'. I'm sure if you drew the same graph of anxiety and depression 8 days after, 6 months after and 2 years after, you'd have a pretty similar curve. Idiots.

[naath]

I think their data does pretty much show "it is not the case that most people who have abortions will be massively depressed about it for years and years and regret it for ever" and about nothing else.

[atreic]

Not sure what that shows - my gut instinct is that you could get a cohort of people who had survived Very Traumatic Things (like death of a partner, fighting in the gulf war, major surgery etc) and find that their depression and anxiety symptoms decrease over two years too. Without a baseline to compare it to, I think you can't conclude much more than 'things happen, people mostly get over them'. 'People get over this sort of stuff eventually' is a very very weak proof that the original thing isn't a bad thing.

[woodpijn]

Also, it's quite a leap from "95% of women think they made the right choice" to "abortion regret is Not A Thing". Any other problems that affect 5% of people which this author wants to claim are Not A Thing?

[atreic]

And there's a lot of weasel room in 'regret'. Thinking you made the right choice once you were in a tough situation with a limited range of choices doesn't mean you don't have lots of sadnesses about the situation. And you can think you made the right choice for the world we live in and the choices you had, and still have lots of regrets that, eg, you weren't in a place where you had better maternity leave / college accomodation for parents and could have made a different choice.

[Also, it's 3 years of followup. The story I hear pushed sometimes is that people have abortions when they are in their late teens / early twenties, and then when they are 35 and want a family and find out they can't, they end up with abortion regret. I'm not saying I believe this - if nothing else, women struggling with the heartbreak of infertility probably end up with _everything_ regret, it's probably not a great foundation for abortion policy - but I don't think the study we have could debunk this narrative.]

[don_fitch]

As a male approaching the age of 90 I'm well over onto the "Abstract Discussion" side of this, but I don't recall ever hearing that a legal/medical abortion in the teens is significantly likely to cause sterility in the early 30s. One or two percent, though possibly a Tragedy for those involved, is pretty much just noise in a statistical sense.

And I've actually known a fair number of women with children who have mentioned that they did have an abortion when young -- which I find rather surprising because I really don't know many women who talk in my presence about things like that. On another hand, I have to wonder about the number/percentage of women who have an abortion (or so) when young, then decide or discover that they're never going to want to have a child.

[atreic]

No, I wasn't making a causal argument, as in abortion causes sterility*. But there are lots of reasons why older women might be childless and not want to be childless (http://gateway-women.com/), and the narrative of regretted abortions tends to be 'and at that point you might wish you'd had the baby you were pregnant with when you were younger'. I'm not saying I believe this, I'm just saying 'hey, we have evidence that 3 years after an abortion women have no regrets' doesn't in any way dispute or argue with this narrative.

* The NHS, who seem to be pretty unbiased on this, say http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1645.aspx?CategoryID=60 which I read as 'low risk', not 'no risk'

[naath]

Equally in that situation you might regret having used contraception, or been abstinent, whilst younger when you might have had more chance of having a baby (or might not, of course).

Or you might have a baby (deliberately or otherwise) and then regret *that*; either choice changes your future, and both possible futures have downsides in them (and upsides too).

[don_fitch]

I think what I was thinking about was that in matters like this fifteen minutes (or a couple of hours or days) can make a lot of difference in the feelings reported by individuals, and I'm not at all sure this wouldn't show up in Statistics as well.

My personal attitude towards abortion is pretty well summed-up in my response a few minutes ago to a query from Emily's List. -"As far back as I can remember -- close to 80 years -- I've always had a strong desire for all people to have as many options/choices as possible, short of seriously damaging the social fabric. And I don't see that the option of not becoming a parent does any real damage. "-

[atreic]

Oh, actually, there is a sample size of 600 given, although I'm not sure how many of those were denied an abortion and how many weren't, and I'm not sure how you'd adjust for the confounding factors that the group denied abortions might be quite different from the group that accessed abortions? Probably ought to read the paper rather than the politicised blog report at this point...