The Virginia Abortion Law

[eliskimo]

The recent highly publicized Virigina bill regarding abortion has been causing quite a bit of stir. OK, that's an understatement. However, in most of the stories and essays I've read there seems to be quite a bit of missing information.

Comments

[larmer]

Thanks for the additional information. Good post. I've been avoiding this debate since it isn't my country but I do find it interesting how abortion is still such a hot topic in the USA.

It is unfortunate that so much of political discussion is done without all of the facts.

BTW is the 1994 information on breast cancer linkage still valid? I thought that linkage was no longer part of the medical community consensus.

2003 National Institute of Cancer says No Link

[deeprivermom]

http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/postionpapers/70-Abortion-Breast-Cancer.pdf... )

[aryanhwy]

Thank you for providing some reasoned and educated commentary on this. I have to admit, I haven't really been following any of this except in so far as some of my FB friends are all up in arms and hysterical (I agree about the ... fittingness ... of this choice of word) and keep posting rants about the topic, which, by dint of the fact that they are clearly not reasoned and educated commentary, I tend to ignore and/or discount.

[deeprivermom]

Stats from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Abortion Surveillance available here:
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/Data_Stats/Abortion.htm

[deeprivermom]

Summary of the challenges and evolving methodology for defining and gathering statistics for maternal mortality rates: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03_033.pdf

[carnemerethwen]

I'm honestly surprised that an abortion wouldn't be added to a medical file... are you aware of any other medical procedures that are not automatically added to a medical file? It seems really risky not to add it.

[carnemerethwen]

Also sorry for the repetitiveness of that comment. Should have read it over before posting.

[eliskimo]

There is a significant difference between a doctor refusing to treat a pregnant woman because the treatment might harm her child (you and I have had discussions on abortion-as-triage before) and a physician refusing to treat a woman who has had an abortion in the past. The latter is punitive and any doctor who acts in such a way should have their license reviewed if not not revoked. The past is the past.

Unfortunately, there is on-going disputation regarding abortion and women's cancers precisely because the information is so often missing from women's medical files. While I strongly disagree with those who would use the possibility of a link as a weapon (i.e. 'don't get an abortion or you'll get cancer'), I also strongly feel that our endocrine systems are so complex, we shouldn't discount possible connections as we search for a cure because of political motives.