Last week, I went to Yahoo’s main page to sign in to one of my email accounts, but one of the slideshow headlines at the top of the page got my attention. With their frequent prog-heavy and/or vapid clickbait, Yahoo’s always good for making me question why I still use a Yahoo email account.
Anyway, beside the story with the tab labeled “Where Syrians are welcome” that was accompanied with a thumbnail photo of an old man tending to a wailing toddler–not manipulative at all–the slide to another article that caught my attention showed a couple of women in a crowd (one was yelling something), holding up signs saying, “DEFUND PLANNED…” with the rest cut off at the bottom of the picture. The caption to the slide read, “At least 100K self-induced abortions in TX…A study reveals that as many as 240,000 women in Texas have taken the procedure into their own hands. Legal access restricted >>.” The tab for the story was labeled, “Self-induced abortions.”
My immediate thought was, oh, BS. The way Yahoo presented it, and with the low-attention span of many Americans, a lot of ignorant people probably glanced over the tidbit of information and came to the conclusion that nearly a quarter of a million Texas women have shoved coat hangers up their own vaginas and yanked out their raw, bloody clumps of cells or drank a gallon of bleach to kill the little suckers.
I admit, I fell for it. I rewarded Yahoo with a click on their story. I had to find out more. I had to find out who performed the study, who and how many participated in the study, the period of time in which the study took place, how far back those participating were asked to recall when giving their responses, why the study was performed in the first place, and how the Yahoo article approached the topic. Typical just-a-blogger inquiries.
It turns out the article originally appeared on Newser. Whatever that is. Minor detail. It begins with a quote from a 24-year-old Texas woman as it appeared in the report that spawned the Yahoo article. “It was the worst cramping I’ve ever had and probably one of the worst pains I’ve gone through. And … there’s always that slight uncertainty of … I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she said when describing her attempt to self-induce the abortion of the fetus growing inside her.
Pulls on the heartstrings, doesn’t it?
The Newser author wrote that the report “underscores the measures women in the Lone Star State are taking as access to abortion facilities is restricted,” then linked to a Guardian article on the report.
The intrepid journalist continued referring to information in the report by citing other websites as if they were the sources of the information. “The Guardian reports…” “The Atlantic reports…” “Mother Jones notes…” She linked to the website where the study came from, but she gave the credit to the other sites. I wonder if she even bothered to read the report for herself.
But enough about her odd approach of the topic. Let’s get into the report itself, the one that’s gotten websites such as Yahoo, Newser, the Guardian, the Atlantic, and Mother Jones all agog with their breathless and alarming headlines, going, “See, see! Look at what the fascists in Texas are doing to women who have a constimatooshunull right to choo-choo-choose!”
This is the typical progressive reaction to Texas’ House Bill 2 (HB2), the law that made Wendy “Abortion Barbie” Davis with her ugly pink sneakers a national media darling and brief superstar for the pro-ab movement. Before HB2, the state had 41 abortion facilities. That number is now down to 18. The people performing the study fret that when the final part of HB2 goes into effect, requiring that all abortion providers must have the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, the number will go further down to 10.
The study, conducted by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) of the University of Texas at Austin (which only appears to deal with reproductive “rights” policy), is actually split into two parts. The first part is titled “Knowledge, opinion and experience related to abortion self-induction in Texas,” the data of which was collected through an online survey of 779 “non-institutionalized Texas-resident women between the ages of 18 and 49” conducted over five weeks from December 2014 to January 2015. The other part, titled “Texas women’s experiences attempting self-induced abortion in the face of dwindling options,” contains snippets of interviews with some of the women who sought methods of self-inducing their abortions. Here was the method the researchers used for this part:
From October 2014 to October 2015, we conducted 18 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with Texas women about their experiences with abortion self-induction. Women, who spoke English or Spanish, were 18 years of age or older, and reported a history of abortion self-induction while living in Texas within the past five years were eligible for the interview. Initial participants were women who reported a history of abortion self-induction in one of two studies: 1) a survey conducted with women aged 18-49 in the Lower Rio Grande Valley on access to reproductive health services in Texas, and 2) a survey conducted with women seeking abortions in Texas clinics following implementation of HB2. We identified additional participants through referral sampling. Women who completed the qualitative interviews were asked if they knew other women who may have attempted to self-induce an abortion and if so, they were asked to invite that person(s) to participate in the study and share the interviewer’s contact information. We also conducted key informant interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and similarly, study participants were asked to refer women they knew who may have attempted abortion self-induction.
Interesting how they focused on the region at the southernmost tip of the state. But more on that second part of the report later.
In the introduction to the first part, the authors’ agenda is unmistakable. Their purpose is to show that Texas’ “advent of onerous legislation imposing restrictions on legal abortion access” has led to an increase of women having to seek their own methods to get an abortion, including “medication abortion” through drugs such as misoprostol, which is available without a prescription just across the border in Mexico. The authors write, “Prior research among women seeking abortion suggests that abortion self-induction is more common in Texas than the rest of the country.”
What prior research do they refer to that suggests, but doesn’t verify, that Texas is more guilty than any other state of making women try to abort on their own before seeking a clump-of-cells-exterminating professional?
First, they cite a Guttmacher Institute study from 2008 that looked at the national picture of self-induced abortions, in which TxPEP says it showed that “less than 2% reported taking something to try to cause an abortion for the current pregnancy prior to coming to [an abortion] clinic.” That isn’t what the Guttmacher study said, though. It said that 1.2 percent of the women used misoprostol prior to seeking an abortion clinic, and another 1.4 percent used “other substances, such as vitamin C and herbs, to attempt to end a pregnancy.” Combined, that’s 2.6 percent. Oops. Common Core strikes again.
Just to note, the Guttmacher Institute is a division of Planned Parenthood.
A few notes about that Guttmacher study. Women born in another country were twice as likely to have used misoprostol than American-born women. Out of the 9,493 women Guttmacher was able to survey, 1,484 (15.6 percent) were born outside of the country. Guttmacher only asked if the women had taken misoprostol, the morning-after pill, another drug, or none of them. It did not ask if women used any other method of self-inducement. The report also noted that the numbers of self-inducement might have been higher than the study showed because some women might not have understood some of the terms on the questionnaire, and others might have been reluctant to report that they attempted to self-induce their abortions, which is a crime in some states. Another aspect to consider was that this survey was taken from women at abortion clinics as they were waiting to have the procedure done. Many women who self-induce never make it to an abortion clinic.
The report also said, “Anecdotal reports suggest that use of misoprostol is most common among Latina women, particularly those who live in border towns or in areas with large immigrant populations.”
It should then come as no surprise that in the other study that TxPEP cited as proof that Texas is the worst, just the absolute worst state when it comes to women who self-induce their abortions, it showed that the percentage of women in Texas who previously tried to self-induce before going to an abortion clinic was highest among women living near the Mexican border. 12 percent of women at clinics near the Texas-Mexican border said they tried to self-induce, compared to 7 percent statewide, according to the 2012 report.
It should also be no surprise that the 2012 report was written by the same TxPEP authors of the TxPEP report from last week where they wanted to make Texas out as a (more) cruel and heartless state towards women who seek abortions.
The only information that the authors provided in the 2012 report about the statewide survey they did was this:
In 2012, we conducted a survey with 318 women seeking abortion in six cities across the state to assess the impact of the 2011 restrictions. We found that 7% of women reported taking something on their own in order to try to end their current pregnancy before coming to the abortion clinic. This proportion was even higher — about 12% — among women at clinics near the Mexican border. Misoprostol and herbs were the methods women more commonly mentioned. By comparison, a nationally representative survey of abortion patients in 2008 found that 2.6% reported ever taking something to attempt to self-induce an abortion.
That’s it. No explanation of the cities or which clinics they went to nor how many. No details on how many women were born in the U.S. or another country. No information on how many women were illegals. No racial breakdown at all. No details given on when or where the women tried to self-induce their abortions. No elaboration on the questions they asked. None of that. We just have to take their word that Texas sucks.
Did you think I wouldn’t notice that they only surveyed 318 women? Heck, no, I wouldn’t forget that. 318 women! Seven percent of 318 is…22.26. Apparently one person they surveyed only identified herself as just over a quarter of a woman. The more likely reason it came to that number was because they rounded up the percentage, which means the actual number of women they surveyed who tried to self-induce their abortions was 22.
Back to the report that TxPEP released last week.
To get the results of the survey that they used to come up with their talking points, the group “invited 1,397 non-institutionalized Texas-resident women between the ages of 18 and 49 to participate in the survey; 779 women completed it.” They surveyed these women online using a service that found the women through the US Postal Service’s list of all U.S.-based addresses. Sounds a bit intrusive, doesn’t it?
So how did TxPEP arrive at the 100,000 to 240,000 number of Texas women who have tried to abort their fetuses themselves? Here’s how.
The surveyors asked these 779 women a couple of simple questions…
First, we asked each respondent whether she thought her best friend had ever attempted to end a pregnancy on her own without medical assistance. Asking about the woman’s best friend takes advantage of the fact that friends tend to be similar to one another in terms of sociodemographics and behavior. When asked about a stigmatized behavior such as abortion, a woman may be more likely to tell the truth about her best friend, while she may withhold the information about herself. This methodology has been used in other settings to estimate how common abortion is. After asking women about their best friend, we then asked whether they themselves had ever tried to end a pregnancy without medical assistance.
What they found was that 1.7 percent of the women surveyed said they “had ever tried to end a pregnancy on their own.” They made sure to stress that women often underreport when they try to self-induce.
In regard to the question about their best friends, 1.8 percent of the women surveyed said “they were sure” their best friends tried to self-induce their abortions, while another 2.3 percent of the women “suspected” they tried.
TxPEP determined there to be 5,949,149 women in Texas from age 15 to 49. (According to what I found on the U.S. Census website, Texas had 6.7 million women in the fertility age range between 15 and 50 years old in 2014.)
Therefore among women from Texas, between 100,000–the equivalent of 1.7 percent of those surveyed–and 240,000–the equivalent of 1.8 plus 2.3 percent of those surveyed about their best friends–have tried to induce an abortion on their own, TxPEP estimated.
TxPEP then said 22 percent of the respondents reported that they, their best friends, or someone else they knew had tried to abort on their own. So hey, that means upwards of 1.3 million Texas women could have attempted to self-induce their abortions! (!!!) TxPEP didn’t actually state that, but they might as well have since they like to add things that women’s best friends may or may not have done to their estimates.
Yet they don’t take into account that a lot of women’s best friends might not even be located in Texas. 44 percent of the women surveyed were Hispanic/Latina/whichever, and that comes out to 343 women. How many of those women were illegals, and how many of them had attempted to induce their own abortions before coming to America? How many of the 343 women’s best friends or the other self-inducers they’ve known have never set foot in the United States, let alone Texas?
These questions also lead me to wonder how many legal female Texas citizens have best friends who live out-of-state or even outside the U.S.
Oh, and 1.7 percent–the amount of attempted self-inducers–of the 779 surveyed? 13.24. Again, that leaves one who identifies herself as one-quarter of woman. Which is STOOPID, which means that we’re talking about 13 women.
If one wants to be extremely generous, we’ll look at the other percentage who said their best friends definitely or maybe-might-have-could-have-but-not-too-sure that they attempted self-inducement. 4.1 percent of 779 is…31.9. So we get to round upward this time to 32 women.
32! Yet through the magic of statistical samples, the University of Texas at Austin’s Policy Evaluation Project was able to take the online accounts of 13 to 32 women–and who knows how many of them were illegal aliens–to prove beyond all doubt that OH EM GEEEEEE 100,000 TO 240,000 TEXAN WOMEN ARE RESORTING TO PERFORMING THEIR OWN ABORTIONS BECAUSE THOSE HORRIBLE TEXAS REDNECKS HAVE DECLARED OPEN SEASON ON WOMEN!
And so it was declared across all the internets by one website after another after another.
It’s also important to note that the survey did not specify a period of time when the women sought to self-induce, such as from 2013 until present, which is how long Texas’ “restrictive” HB2 law has been in place. These self-induced abortions could have taken place as far back as 1981, if one were to go back to the time when now-49-year-old women were 15. One could go back even further if these women’s best friends are older than 49. There are so many variables one can take into consideration when breaking apart these numbers.
Does anyone–anyone–working for the news outlets putting out bogus information like this have an honest, analytical bone in their bodies? I’m obviously being rhetorical, but if they were indeed skeptical and didn’t simply regurgitate the information organizations like TxPEP fed them, this absurd study would never make its way to the mainstream headlines, and the people who worked on this Texas Policy Evaluation Project report would be laughed right out of their careers, if not run right out of town on a rail. Journalists are a bunch of schmucks.
And we return to that study. When the 779 women were asked about the abortion-inducing drug misoprostol, TxPEP found that most of the women said they didn’t know what it was.
When asked directly about misoprostol, only 13% of respondents in this survey said they had heard of it. However, it was the most commonly reported method among women who reported knowing someone who had attempted abortion self-induction. Other methods reported by those who knew someone who had attempted self-induction included herbs or homeopathic remedies, getting hit or punched in the abdomen, using alcohol or illicit drugs, or taking hormonal pills.
What, no coathangers? I see…so pregnant women seeking abortions outside of clinics only get punched and drunk in back alleys nowadays. But not necessarily in that order.
This study also determined that only 14 percent of respondents believed that women should be prosecuted for trying to self-induce their abortions, while 26 percent thought that self-inducing abortions should not be illegal. 34 percent said they were against abortion but could understand why someone would try to self-induce. So more women are non-committal on the subject, I guess.
That was the gist of the first part of the TxPEP study. Okay, more than just the gist. I might have gotten a bit carried away. But there was so much Oscar Mayer b-o-l-o-g-n-a that had to be fried.
As for the second part of TxPEP’s research, it centered on the anecdotes of the aforementioned 18 women they managed to find for their interviews as well as giving doomsday predictions for women who want to terminate their pregnancies.
The authors wrote in their introduction that in the first six months after the enactment of HB2, abortions at clinics in the state dropped 13 percent. The use of medications to abort fell by 70 percent. Some in the media picked up on those details when they were revealed last year, as if a drop in abortions was a bad thing. Oh no, the law…is working?
The group argues that the law has led to an increased waiting period on abortions, which increases the risk of medical complications for the women who don’t want to be mothers. Yet in the six months after HB2 went into effect, second-trimester abortions in the state rose from 13.5 of all abortions to 13.9 percent. Not that much, in other words. And that’s using the numbers they came up with. They still estimated in a report last month that second-trimester abortions could nearly double because of HB2’s ambulatory surgical care provision. TxPEP likes to deal in estimations and fear-mongering what ifs, if you couldn’t tell.
In all the reading I was doing as I looked into all these TxPEP articles and related materials, I don’t recall ever seeing the suggestion that these abortion clinic closures could be avoided if only the clinics abided by the ambulatory care requirements of the law. Abortion is a medical procedure, and it should be treated like one. But abortion is almost viewed as if it were nothing more than taking your dog or cat to be spayed or neutered. Progressives would rather wail and lament about the end of the world for reproductive rights than make an effort to have more abortion providers and practitioners that are trained, licensed, and organized as proper medical services like they ought to be.
The four main reasons the women tried to do the abortions were the reasons you would expect. No money (someone else’s fault). Their local clinic had closed (someone else’s fault). They listened to someone who suggested they try it (someone else’s fault). Shame or stigma over going to a clinic for an abortion (how dare you all make her feel bad). The two main ways the women tried to self-induce were through the use of home remedies such as herbs, teas, and vitamins” and by taking “medications obtained in Mexico without a prescription,” which they either obtained on their own or through someone they knew. Ten of the 18 women used misoprostol.
Most women reported having little or no difficulty finding the medication they were looking for. None of the women had a prescription for the medication they were seeking, but most did know which specific medication to ask for.
This tells me that the women TxPEP interviewed already had experience in how to take care of their own abortions, or at least knew how to find access to foreign or black market sources for their self-inducement methods.
The authors concluded that HB2 will make more Texas women look to aborting their unborn on their own, especially “Latinas near the border.” Again, mainly illegals, they’re saying. Title X, the federal family-planning program, covers people no matter where they come from. While the funding doesn’t go directly toward abortions, some of that money goes to Planned Parenthood. There will be a growing push by progressives to federally fund abortions for illegals at some point, one would think.
Noticeably absent from all these reports I read by TxPEP was any reference to Planned Parenthood. I was curious about that, so I looked into it.
The lead author in a lot of these TxPEP abortion research studies is a man by the name of Daniel Grossman, who’s a Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California-San Francisco and Senior Advisor of Ibis Reproductive Health, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that focuses, obviously, on women’s “reproductive health,” though how abortions are healthy, I’m not sure.
Ibis received over $2 million in contributions from various sources, according to their 990 tax form from 2013, which I found on several websites. Ibis paid Grossman, who’s listed on the form as “Vice President of Research,” over $125,000 in compensation that year, and he got another $17,000 from Ibis “and related organizations.” The form says that the organization received in excess of $136,000 in government grants in 2013, so your taxes essentially paying this man’s salary at the organization where he comes up with all these studies that condemn pro-life policies.
Among Ibis’ funders, according to the website CitzenAudit, is the International Planned Parenthood Federation. And one of the payees who receives money on Ibis’ behalf…is Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest. The Guttmacher Institute, the organization I mentioned earlier, is also an Ibis payee. And the University of Texas at Austin, of which the Texas Policy Evaluation Project is a part, is listed on the Ibis website’s “Funders and Strategic Partners” page. Funny how they’re all interconnected, isn’t it? Funny-interesting in a totally predictable way.
“It’s actually really relieving and I guess it’s good for other people to know that they’re not by themselves,” said one self-inducer when TxPEP asked her why she allowed them to interview her. “It wasn’t an easy thing to do but it was something that we thought was right and we shouldn’t be judged for it.”
No, my dear. We aren’t judging you. That would be a real punch to the gut, wouldn’t it?
Did I mention that TxPEP gave each of the women a $50 gift card for participating in the interviews? It is but a small price to pay for a well-funded–and federally-aided–progressive movement with an agenda to push.
Yahoo!
