Is this article evil or not?

[rah]

Actually I do find the million number more reasonable which is why I have a big problem with the 800. Yes people were different back them, but not that different. When I was in school in the 60s' every high school had a handfull of pregos. At least half of them had abortions based on the rumors we heard. Add up the number of high schools in the US and that makes those numbers in the early to mid 60's look ridiculous.

But again, that is only MY OPINION. Since that type of thing was more scandalous back then, so no one was open about it. Which is the main reason why I don't believe any of the early numbers.

[Ben Kenobi]

Actually I do find the million number more reasonable which is why I have a big problem with the 800. Yes people were different back them, but not that different. When I was in school in the 60s' every high school had a handfull of pregos. At least half of them had abortions based on the rumors we heard. Add up the number of high schools in the US and that makes those numbers in the early to mid 60's look ridiculous.

60s were when the abortion rates ramped up severely. To me the numbers have a perfect correlation with what was going on in society, you have a big jump in the 'summer of love' in '64 and all the way through until '73. Then you have another jump right in '43, after folks went away to war, which didn't go down until after they came back in the late 40's, and stayed low throughout the '50s.

If you had a high school of several thousand people and a handful (say 5) were pregnant, and maybe 2 of them had abortions, that is a far cry from when I went to school, and you have the health nurse referring people in junior high. Things have changed from the 40's and 50's to the 60's and have changed now.

The numbers make sense, particularly those ramping up before legalisation. It's not that we see a 'sudden jump' from 800 to a million, we have a transition period in the early 70s.

But again, that is only MY OPINION. Since that type of thing was more scandalous back then, so no one was open about it. Which is the main reason why I don't believe any of the early numbers.

But you'd accept a million? I don't understand that.

[BeBMan]

Bebro, you didn't add any commentary of your own in the OP.

You want me to destroy a perfect cut&paste job?

[rah]

But you'd accept a million? I don't understand that.

People are much more open now, so it's more possible to do reliable research on it. If we put an online survey out and asked women about it, I believe they'd be truthful about it. (which I doubt would have been the case in 50's and 60's) And it is my belief that the numbers you quote support my opinion. I don't see how anyone could trust any of those early numbers after seeing a 7.

[MrFun]

You want me to destroy a perfect cut&paste job?

You're right - any expressed thoughts of your own would have ruin it, like it would with anything else.


(joking)

[Ben Kenobi]

People are much more open now, so it's more possible to do reliable research on it.

Well I've done a fair amount of work on this one topic. One of the things we are dealing with here in Canada is that the agencies (paid for by the taxpayers), are no longer reporting any statistics at all. We are going back to the dark ages. The latest 'estimates' by statistics canada have simply quoted the last year and gone from there. This year, they have finally decided that they will not release the total because they don't trust the agencies anymore to report the true figures.

I agree that the early numbers are more difficult to get. If I were using these numbers I would just set up a trendline. Why only 7 in 1950? I don't know. I'd have to ask the researcher. I'm not assuming that there were only 7 that year, nor am I assuming that the numbers as stated represent the full picture. I agree with you that there is likely to be some underreporting. This is why I'm estimating 800 a year, which is sometimes 2, 2.5 times these numbers reported.

The problem with the million number is that if you assume there were a million illegal abortions, why is maternal mortality so low? You have maybe 1000 women dying in the early 60s from maternal mortality each year in the US. If we assume that the illegal abortions have a 1 in 5000 chance of killing a woman, you would expect to see 1750 women dying each year in the sixties, just from abortion alone, notwithstanding the other women who die during childbirth.

This is why the million abortion number is complete hogwash. We do know that the maternal mortality numbers are far more reliable than the abortion numbers. You simply cannot have twice as many women dying from abortion, as all women who die during pregnancy.

[rah]

After a little googling, there were MANY sites that reported average numbers per year. While I'm not going to verify each site the numbers ranged from a low of about 650k to a high of 1.25 mil, so 1 mil a year would not seem out of line. (and certainly not Hogwash)

And our company has done a little research in this area over the years and the numbers were not that different.

[Ben Kenobi]

May I ask what prompted the research? I'm not objecting to the conclusions, just curious why an ad firm would find that number valuable to their own research. FWIW my research was on contract with a prolife organisation up here, which is why they needed those numbers.

Any number under 200 thousand or so would be consistant with the maternal mortality, but given that it goes down while abortions go up, I'd say that illegal abortions were never a significant component of maternal mortality. If there's only 850 by 1970, and roughly 250 thousand abortions, that would mean 438 of those deaths were due to abortion. I can see around 125 thousand, but nothing higher then that would work with the overall maternal mortality.

[Blaupanzer]

Based on a single conversation with a doctor who did illegal abortions before WW II, he gave his numbers for San Francisco area alone as about 100 a year. That's more than any pre-war number per year and only counts one man (one of three he said) in one city in that period. Then, he wished to remain nameless, and my real research was in an entirely different field of questionable legality. He has since passed away.

IIRC, a New Orleans back-alley-type was convicted in the mid-50s for doing over 50 illegal procedures in 1950 (the year with "7" in the survey). Again only one person in one city. The pre-1970 numbers are clearly crap.

[BeBMan]

IIRC, a New Orleans back-alley-type was convicted in the mid-50s for doing over 50 illegal procedures in 1950 (the year with "7" in the survey). Again only one person in one city.

Convicting innocent people

[Ben Kenobi]

IIRC, a New Orleans back-alley-type was convicted in the mid-50s for doing over 50 illegal procedures in 1950 (the year with "7" in the survey). Again only one person in one city. The pre-1970 numbers are clearly crap.

Something has to give then.

Either AGI is wrong about illegal abortions being that deadly, or they were not a million abortions back then. As for San Francisco, remember that the larger cities are going to be the highest proportion, say 80/20 split.

If there were only 300 a year in SF, and SF was say the number 3 place for abortions in the nation (I'd say probably half were in NYC alone, you'd probably get numbers around 1500 or so nationally. A far cry from the million.

[rah]

May I ask what prompted the research? I'm not objecting to the conclusions, just curious why an ad firm would find that number valuable to their own research. FWIW my research was on contract with a prolife organisation up here, which is why they needed those numbers.

We're not an ad firm. We're a market research firm. We do a lot of work for health care service groups and drug companies. And the numbers I looked at were based on the raw data not on what was finally published/used so I can honestly say that there was no bias at that point.

[rah]

Something has to give then.
If there were only 300 a year in SF, and SF was say the number 3 place for abortions in the nation (I'd say probably half were in NYC alone, you'd probably get numbers around 1500 or so nationally. A far cry from the million.

Even if it was as low as you estimate of 1500 that's 15 time higher than the number reported in your table. More proof that those early numbers are not reliable.

[Blaupanzer]

You get a number around 15,000 or so, if you consider the number of cities the size of SF and NO or larger, and the numbers considered here. Also, Puerto Rico ran a thriving business in quickie abortions for sea cruse passengers from about 1925 to at least 1960. Hustle the young lady to the "doctor," then back to the ship to a pre-agreed upon recovery room for the remainder of the cruise until the ship finished a two-week cruise and landed in Miami. All arranged by a certain cruise line for several "family groups" per voyage. Tsk, Tsk.

Yes, a lot less than 1,000,000. But not "7," or "86."

[rah]

I don't remember anyone here claiming that there were a million a year that long far back.