Talk:Abortion

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Anonymous quotes signed "A"

There is no dispute that these quotes are accurate, are from the journal edited by Anthony, and they were signed "A". Thus they do not belong in the "Dipsuted" section, but under Section A. Any concern about the varying attributions is covered very succinctly in the attribution blurb, which does NOT attribute the words to a specific person, but rather accurately describes the source of the quotation and its varying implications. 69.138.131.88 18:34, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I have reorganized the article with these quotes in a section labeled "Anonymous" rather than "Disputed", along with other anonymousities. Is this an acceptable compromise? ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I support the move by Ningauble of all anonymous entries to their own section at the bottom. Certainly the 1869 essay signed "A" belongs there. Binksternet (talk) 20:02, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree also. Since we really can't know who said these things, or whether they were notable or knowledgeable figures, the quotes are of no value except to show that a random person of the time period in which they are reported would have said what was said. BD2412 T 21:33, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Scholarly conclusions about Susan B. Anthony

Ann D. Gordon is the world's top scholar on Susan B. Anthony. She is the leader of the 30-year Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Papers Project at Rutgers University. She has coordinated the effort to digitize, classify and interpret all of the 14,000 known documents pertaining to Anthony and her colleague Stanton. Gordon has determined that Anthony cannot be said to be the author of the 1869 essay marked "A" because of its preachy, religious tone (Anthony was not religious) and because Anthony never, ever signed "A" to her writings. Beyond that, Anthony never dedicated any of her speeches or essays to the subject of abortion—she considered it a political hot potato, a distraction from the more important goal of women's right to vote. See Susan B. Anthony abortion dispute.

The only connection that the essay has to Anthony is that Anthony was the owner of the newspaper which printed it. She was not the editor of the Revolution: that duty was shared by Parker Pillsbury and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Anthony was not involved in day-to-day oversight of the newspaper; in July 1869 she was off to Saratoga for a women's rights convention and in August she was angering men in Philadelphia as she tried to get into a Labor convention. She was constantly riding trains to various US cities to give speeches and help the cause of suffrage; she was not sitting in the Revolution office going over typeset pages.

When scholars such as Ann D. Gordon and Laury Oaks agree with each other and with Anthony biographer Lynn Sherr that Anthony was not interested in speaking out or writing about abortion, we take their conclusions seriously. No topic scholar has spoken up in disagreement. On the other hand, the assertions of pro-life activists such as Cat Clark and Marjorie Dannenfelser are inherently suspect and wholly insufficient to counterbalance the weight of scholarship. Any pro-life activist saying Anthony was a pro-life activist cannot be given equal footing to a neutral scholar studying all of Anthony's writings. Binksternet (talk) 20:02, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

This discussion would be well-suited to an article about Susan B. Anthony. The attribution on the wikiquote page should not include that discussion. Mention of the common attribution and a scholar's disputation of that attribution is appropriate. The quote has been moved and the dispute is included. 76.6.193.163 22:36, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Looking after our readers, we cannot let them take away the impression that Susan B. Anthony actually wrote those quotes when the leading scholars agree that she did not. Any changes that put some degree of uncertainty on the matter—any diminution of the scholarly assessment—should be resisted. The reader should know not to assign these quotes to SBA, no matter how much pro-life propaganda uses them. Binksternet (talk) 22:59, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Paternalistic edits are not needed at Wikiquote. —This unsigned comment is by 76.6.193.163 (talk • contribs) .

That's rich, coming from an IP editor who is promoting the anti-abortion position on Wikiquote rather than pushing for neutral representation. Th favoring of paternalism is also evident in this change you made to Ave Maria, Florida, taking out the well-cited word "controversial". Monaghan is nothing if not paternal. Binksternet (talk) 22:33, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Deleted quotes:

• One of the most basic problems with abortion is this, you give the women a voice, but where's the man's voice?
  • Tim Peterson

• What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status. But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary.
  • Richard Dawkins; as qtd. in James Randerson, “Richard Dawkins Chimpanzee Hybrid?”, The Guardian, Jan 2009.

Re: See also * Famine * Hunger * Scarcity

Moved discussion to: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Village_pump#%22See_also%22_policy/guidelines?_UDScott,_Kalki_&_Ottawahitech —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Butwhatdoiknow (talk • contribs) 15:44, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Article length

The article is 729 thousand bytes long (latest revision as of 1 July 2022), and 724 thousand bytes long without pictures.

According to the English Wikipedia's article size rule states that articles going over 100 kilobytes in prose should almost certainly be divided. The articles on the English Wikipedia's long page list (archived URL) don't go over 550 kilobytes in size (including markup, I presume).

Should some of the quotes on this page be limited to 250 words or less, as the quotation guideline states, or what should be done to make prose navigation more comfortable? Should there be a Wikiquote guideline mirroring the English Wikipedia's WP:SIZERULE, that was mentioned above? - Victor P. (talk) 10:09, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Surplus

A

• "The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy, the relative risk of mental health problems is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion or deliver that pregnancy," said Brenda Major, PhD, chair of the task force. "The evidence regarding the relative mental health risks associated with multiple abortions is more uncertain."
  The task force found that some studies indicate that some women do experience sadness, grief and feelings of loss following an abortion, and some may experience "clinically significant disorders, including depression and anxiety." However, the task force found "no evidence sufficient to support the claim that an observed association between abortion history and mental health was caused by the abortion per se, as opposed to other factors."
  The report noted that other co-occurring risk factors, including poverty, prior exposure to violence, a history of emotional problems, a history of drug or alcohol use, and prior unwanted births predispose women to experience both unwanted pregnancies and mental health problems after a pregnancy, irrespective of how the pregnancy is resolved. Failures to control for these co-occurring risk factors, the task force noted, may lead to reports of associations between abortion history and mental health problems that are misleading.
  The report noted that women have abortions for many different reasons and within different personal, social, economic and cultural circumstances, all of which could affect a woman's mental state following abortion. "Consequently," the task force wrote, "global statements about the psychological impact of abortion can be misleading."
  According to the report, women terminating a wanted pregnancy, who perceived pressure from others to terminate their pregnancy, or who perceived a need to keep their abortion secret from their family and friends because of stigma associated with abortion, were more likely to experience negative psychological reactions following abortion.
  The task force noted that despite the importance of understanding the mental health implications of abortion compared to its alternatives – motherhood or adoption—very few studies included appropriate comparison groups for addressing this issue. One of the task force's chief recommendations is for better-designed, rigorously conducted future research on the topic to "help disentangle confounding factors and establish relative risks of abortion compared to its alternatives."
  • "APA Task Force Finds Single Abortion Not a Threat to Women's Mental Health" (Press release). American Psychological Association. 12 August 2008. Archived from the original on 6 September 2011. Retrieved 7 September 2011.

• The meta-analysis by Dr Saccone and colleagues concludes that surgical abortion “is an independent risk factor” for subsequent preterm birth. The authors found a weak association (odds ratios [OR], 1.44; 95% confidence interval, 1.09–1.90) between abortion and preterm birth, but we question whether this association is causal. We agree with the discussion of study limitations and will highlight several key points. First, the reported associations all had OR <2. Not only do bias and confounding often account for weak associations, but OR exaggerate true relative risk. Second, most studies included failed to adjust for important known confounders such as prior preterm birth, race, smoking, and short interpregnancy interval. Third, many studies had case-control designs, and recall bias has been shown to have a powerful impact in case-control studies of abortion, exaggerating negative outcomes of abortion.
  Even if some of the reported association is causal, the attributable risk of preterm birth following abortion is very small. When women continue unintended pregnancies, however, they may be at increased risk of preterm birth in that pregnancy. One systematic review found an association between unwanted pregnancies and preterm birth with an OR magnitude similar to the findings presented here (OR, 1.50; 95% confidence interval, 1.41–1.61). When women gained access to safe abortion in Oregon, a decrease in preterm birth and neonatal mortality were observed. Access to abortion also has clear social and economic benefits for women and families, likely affecting future pregnancy outcomes and preterm births.
  The data presented are insufficient to support counseling women that abortion is a risk factor for preterm birth or to warrant the large and expensive randomized trials to further evaluate this association as proposed by the authors. We suggest funding would be better spent on interventions known to prevent preterm birth: prenatal care, contraception, and smoking cessation, for example.
  • Averbach, Sarah H.; Seidman, Dominika; Steinauer, Jody; Darney, Philip (1 January 2017). "Re: Prior uterine evacuation of pregnancy as independent risk factor for preterm birth: a systematic review and metaanalysis". American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. 216 (1): 87. doi:10.1016/j.ajog.2016.08.038. PMID 27596618.

B

• Labor induction abortion provides a safe method of terminating pregnancies in the second trimester. With the introduction of new prostaglandin analogues and mifepristone, there have been major changes in efficacy, side effect profiles, and clinical practice. Procedures with prostaglandin E1 analogues have the shortest induction times. Prostaglandin E2 procedures may be slightly longer, but are accompanied by a higher rate of side effects. Prostaglandin F and non-prostaglandin methods have the longest induction times. The time to induction is influenced by parity, with nulliparous women having longer inductions, and by gestational age, with higher gestation associated with longer inductions.
  Complications of procedures with current methods include bleeding and the need for transfusion, which varies but is commonly reported around 0.5%. Infection is uncommon. A more serious concern is uterine rupture, which is documented by multiple case reports. It is unclear whether rupture is associated with a particular agent. Although rupture appears to be more common with a uterine scar, neither the absolute nor relative risk has been determined. Retained placenta or the use of operative procedure occurs in most series of 5–10% of women using mifepristone techniques and in some series of misoprostol abortion without mifepristone.
  • Borgatta, L (December 2014). "Labor Induction Termination of Pregnancy". Global Library of Women's Medicine. GLOWM.10444. doi:10.3843/GLOWM.10444. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 25 September 2015.

• In the past 12 years there have been 154 arson attacks, 39 bombings and 99 acid attacks against abortion providers. Seven have been killed in the last five years.
  • Borger, Julian (3 February 1999). "The bomber under siege". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 22 February 2017.

Precisely because murder, although a real social problem is horrible enough and sufficiently removed form everyday life to provide the excitement of the extreme and perverse, it makes a useful subject for fiction, whereas abortion raises problems which are too familiar, too troubling, too ambivalent, and not sufficiently exotic to afford the same satisfaction in reading. ~ John Boslik

• A subtler analogue occurs in treatments of murder and abortion in twentieth-century fiction. Both are the objects of real and urgent moral, emotional, and legal concerns among American citizens. Yet murder is depicted vastly more often than abortion: it is the single most common plot device in whole genres of imaginative literature-novels, movies, and television. Abortion occurs much less often as a plot device even in novels, and almost never in movies or on television. Is this because murder is a familiar part of most Americans’ lives and abortion is not? Or because Americans are more likely to be affected by a murder than by an abortion? Or because murder is less horrible and disapproved than abortion?
  On the contrary: there are enormously more abortions in the United States than murders, and vastly more members of the reading public are affected by abortion than by homicide (unless, of course, one categorized abortions as “murders,” but it is still not the act on which the bulk of mystery or action plots turn). Moreover, although substantial elements of the population are categorically opposed to it, many Americans do not regard abortion as immoral. Precisely because murder, although a real social problem is horrible enough and sufficiently removed form everyday life to provide the excitement of the extreme and perverse, it makes a useful subject for fiction, whereas abortion raises problems which are too familiar, too troubling, too ambivalent, and not sufficiently exotic to afford the same satisfaction in reading.
  • John Boslik, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance", (Nov 1998), pp.9-10

In addition, the fact that abortion is so controversial makes it a risky subject for a medium designed to appeal to a general audience. Partisans of any point of view are likely to take exception to-possible even action against- a work that depicts abortion from a perspective they oppose, and it is safer for writers to avoid such topics in a culture in which commercial success affects artistic considerations. ~ John Boslik

• Results: During 1988-1997, the overall death rate for women obtaining legally induced abortions was 0.7 per 100000 legal induced abortions. The risk of death increased exponentially by 38% for each additional week of gestation. Compared with women whose abortions were performed at or before 8 weeks of gestation, women whose abortions were performed in the second trimester were significantly more likely to die of abortion-related causes. The relative risk (unadjusted) of abortion-related mortality was 14.7 at 13-15 weeks of gestation (95% confidence interval [CI] 6.2, 34.7), 29.5 at 16-20 weeks (95% CI 12.9, 67.4), and 76.6 at or after 21 weeks (95% CI 32.5, 180.8). Up to 87% of deaths in women who chose to terminate their pregnancies after 8 weeks of gestation may have been avoidable if these women had accessed abortion services before 8 weeks of gestation.
  Conclusion: Although primary prevention of unintended pregnancy is optimal, among women who choose to terminate their pregnancies, increased access to surgical and nonsurgical abortion services may increase the proportion of abortions performed at lower-risk, early gestational ages and help further decrease deaths.
  • Bartlett, LA; Berg, CJ; Shulman, HB; Zane, SB; Green, CA; Whitehead, S; Atrash, HK (2004), "Risk factors for legal induced abortion-related mortality in the United States", Obstetrics & Gynecology, 103 (4): 729–37, doi:10.1097/01.AOG.0000116260.81570.60, PMID 15051566, S2CID 42597014

• Voluntary abortion is the most controversial act in the entire field of medical practice, although today, it is a practice that, under different conditions, has been legalized in more than 100 countries, mostly in the developed world. The United Nations has agreed that in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning and, therefore, it should be utilized only when contraception has failed. Overall, 61% of humanity lives in countries where abortion is legal and widely available; 14% in countries where termination is allowed to protect a woman’s health; physical, mental, or both; 21% in countries where it can be performed only to save the mother’s life and 4% in countries where abortion is not permitted at all. Restrictive legislation, per se, does not represent a valid deterrent to prevent abortion, while it may contribute to an increase in morbidity and mortality associated with pregnancy. In addition, because abortion is outlawed, nothing is done to actively reduce the reasons leading to it. Indeed, the countries with the lowest abortion rates are those where, on the one hand, pregnancy termination is legal and, on the other, sex education and contraceptive knowledge are widely spread.
  • G. Benagiano, A. Pera; “Decreasing the need for abortion: challenges and constraints”, Int J Gynecol Obstet, 70 (1) (2000), pp. 35-48

• Law & Order, Grey's Anatomy, Better Things, Station 19, Call the Midwife and Teen Mom: The Next Chapter are all TV shows that had depictions of abortion in 2022, according to the new Abortion Onscreen report. Among the annual study's findings this year:
  There's been an uptick in the number of shows and plotlines centered around abortion. Researchers found 60 abortion plotlines or mentions in 52 shows in 2022, versus 47 abortion plotlines in 42 shows in 2021.
  For the first time in ten years, a third of the TV plotlines portrayed barriers to abortion access versus only two such plotlines in 2021.
  Demographics on TV continue to misrepresent reality. In 2022, 58 percent of TV characters who obtained an abortion were white women when, in reality, it's mostly women of color.
  For about ten years now, researchers at the Abortion Onscreen project have scoured scripted and reality TV shows searching for any mention of abortion, but this year the work happened in a new context. "The overturn of Roe v Wade catalyzed a lot of people to really understand the importance of sharing abortion story lines on television," says Steph Herold, author of the report from the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program at the University of California, San Francisco.
  Herold calls the increase in TV plot lines addressing the legal, financial and logistical barriers to access "significant."
  "Showrunners, writers, producers have really woken up to the abortion access crisis," she says.
  • Elizabeth Blair, “Abortion stories on TV get closer to reality, says new report”, NPR, Morning Edition, (December 19, 2022)

• Labor induction abortion is an alternative to surgical abortion in the second trimester, and provides access to abortion services when there are no providers trained in second trimester surgical abortion techniques. Induction of labor is also indicated in some cases of pregnancy termination for fetal abnormalities, such as when an intact fetus is important for diagnosis or for the patient's grieving process. However, an intact fetus is not necessary solely to confirm prenatal diagnosis of a genetic abnormality; accurate chromosomal analysis can be performed in almost every case after a dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure.
  Although the majority of second trimester abortions performed in the United States are performed surgically, second trimester induction of labor is performed more frequently as gestational age increases. In the late second trimester and third trimester, labor induction is the primary method of elective termination in cases of lethal fetal abnormalities. When termination of a desired pregnancy is necessary for maternal indications, gestational age and the likelihood of fetal survival are factors in the choice of a treatment regimen.
  The incidence of induction abortion is higher in many other countries where D&E is not commonly practiced either as a matter of medical policy or because of the lack of facilities or providers.
  • Borgatta, L (December 2014). "Labor Induction Termination of Pregnancy". Global Library of Women's Medicine. GLOWM.10444. doi:10.3843/GLOWM.10444. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 25 September 2015.