Republican Virginia Delegate: Disabled Children are God's Punishment for Abortions

[wolfie]

I'd be inclined to say it's "junk science", in that the "study" in question deliberately didn't control for OTHER factors affecting the rate of birth defects. For example, the older the mother, the higher the chance of birth defects. Odds are that a woman who has an abortion will have her first live birth later in life than a woman who doesn't. Also, there's probably some correleation between lifestyle factors that can cause birth defects (drinking, for one) and a woman's likelihood to abort an unplanned pregnancy rather than carry it to term.

A while back, there was a "study" that linked abortion to breast cancer. On the other hand, it's known that the longer breast tissue is in a "half-developed" stage (first level of maturation is at puberty, second is toward the end of a woman's first full-term pregnancy when it's "gearing up" to produce milk), the higher the risk of cancer. Again, aborting an early-in-life pregnancy will result in the first full-term pregnancy being at an older age than not getting the abortion. Using the same "logic" as that study, it can be shown that joining a convent (nuns take a vow of celebacy, and are therefore extremely unlikely to ever get pregnant) causes breast cancer.

[Greenday]

wolfie, women who have abortions DO have a higher risk for birth defects in future pregnancies. It's not junk science.

[Duelist925]

wolfie, women who have abortions DO have a higher risk for birth defects in future pregnancies. It's not junk science.

And he gave several reasons OTHER than the abortion that all might be just as viable, and probably are MORE viable, than abortion.

Environmental factors, age of the mother, etc, etc.

It IS junk science to claim a correlation between two things based off one piece of data, when other data could just as easily explain it. With an in depth scientific study by a non partisian source, it is irresponsible to make such claims.