Shrimp boat captain delivers shrimp
This guy done good… delivered a baby breech – following proper medical protocol as near as I can tell – who was at least two weeks early. Plus the good captain was able to administer neonate cpr, which is far different than regular cpr. Wow. Don’t quite track that he actually did that for “20 to 25 minutes,” though. Hope baby is ok.
From the Associated Press, today:
When the cook on his shrimp boat went into labor 30 miles offshore [from Freeport, TX], captain Ed Keisel grabbed a new roll of paper towels and a first aid handbook and did the best he could.
He successfully delivered Cindy Preisel’s baby boy, even though the baby’s feet emerged first.
“i’m no doctor, but even I knew that’s not supposed to happen,” Keisel said.
“I reached with my fingers… as gently as I could and popped out his left shoulder and then his right,” he said. “But then the little guy was stuck by his head, being strangled. So I did the only thing I could – I waited for a contraction and then slid my fingers in around the top of his head and scooped him out.”
But the newborn wasn’t breathing, so Keisel gently administered CPR.
“I started giving mouth-to-mouth, three short puffs, and then thumping and rubbing its back,” he said.
The baby began to take short breaths, and after 20 to 25 minutes of CPR, gulped in air. His lips turned rosy and he started crying….
Keisel used net twine, sterilized in boiling water, to tie off the umbilical cord and cut the newborn free from his mother….The baby wasn’t due until mid-September.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
So Valerie, let me see if I understand you– you think there’s some kind of conspiracy going on, with Guttmacher deliberately underreporting the number of deaths from abortion? By a factor of ten?
Is the editorial staff of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in on it too?
What about the faculty of the CDC?
You wrote: “… they announce all the numbers as facts, when they are really just estimates”
Everything in epidemiology is an estimate. For that matter everything in science is an estimate. Why do you think statisticians get such high salaries?
I agree with you that statistics should be gathered and kept more consistantly.
By the way, it is a rhetorical mistake for you to try to back up an argument with a list of the names of victims of rare events. It’s juvenile. Your thesis committee would laugh you to scorn.
Posted by: SoMG at August 28, 2007 11:00 PM
SOMG:
Your funny! The book you referenced was published in 1904.
“Obstetrics: A Text-Book for the Use of Students and Practitioners
from Medscape General Medicine
Here we go… See if you can keep up.
My husband is a Metrologist. This is someone who deals with precise measurement. The use of statistics is used all the time in his career as he sells equipment that assists with this precise measurement. The statistic for marginal error of any measurment is extremely important in his field, if the marginal error is too high cars could fall apart or airplanes may fall out of the sky. Not to mention that if the lids to food containers such as jelly jars are not sized correctly then food can spoil. So… I showed him all of this on this post.
First of all, the statement that a woman is ten times more likely to die in childbirth than someone who has an abortion is mathematically correct. However, it is extremely deceptive. We are talking about 10 times more in fractions, not whole numbers. This changes alot. In percentages women who die from abortion is .0006% and women who die from childbirth is .0091%.
Also, you can compare and make a statistic for anything. However, in order to have accurate information reporting there must be levels of consistencies in order to complete this accuracy. Let’s say that we make a statitic for vaginal tears in women who did kagel excercise vs women who didn’t before childbirth. This is a consistent study as the majority of factors are as similar as possible with the exception of the factor being studied. This means that the women in this study were all in full term childbirth with no complications. If there is a deviation from this control meathod (example, premature delivery), then that deviation would not be counted as it doesn’t comply with the consistencies of the study.
Now, comparing the maternal deaths from an 8 week gestation abortion to a 36 week gestation childbirth does not meet the level of acceptable consistencies because very minimal factors are similar. The other problem with this comparison is the lack of consistent collection of data. This makes the statistic very iffy and problamatic. It also makes the conclusion questionable because of the difficulites in comparison.
In order to have the correct control, the examiners must not have too many deviations. In order to comply with proper control then the study must keep gestational age similar as this is the biggest deviant in the study and one of the only deviants that is reported. Other deviants would be race, age and prenatal care. However, since some states do not report this information it would be impossible to control those deviations. However, gestational age is reported by states in abortion research in order to obtain safety records for the different methods that must be used the older the gestational age. Also, gestational age is reported by states in order to study cause and effect of childbirth and to correctly compile complications that arise before, during and after delivery.
So, in order to figure out which method of ending a pregnancy, be that abortion or birth, ends in more maternal deaths the gestational age must be as accurate as possible as this is the biggest and only controlable deviant. However, For abortion, the older the gestational age, the higher the risk for maternal death. For childbirth there doesn’t seem to be a consistent gestational age for complications, however there aren’t many pregnancy associated maternal deaths in the first trimester. This comparrison also makes the study difficult and problamatic.
Most abortions are done in the first trimester, primarily between 8-10 weeks and the first trimester is the safest time to have an abortion. Childbirth is almost always consistent with the 3rd trimester which is a time when most abortions are not done.
How then, with all these deviations can there be an accurate study? All of these inconsistencies only prove one thing in a statistical sense. That abortions should be done at or before 8 weeks gestation in order for it to be safer than childbirth. And since most abortions are performed at this time, then that is where the data of abortion being safer than childbirth has come about. However, the deviations make this almost impossible to determine the accuracy.
Now – the maternal death rates for an 8 week gestational age abortion and 8 week gestational age pregnancy is virtually non-exsistant. However, the older the fetus, the more complications can arise from abortion. and childbirth complications can only be compiled the older the fetus.
In other words, it is impossible to compare the two because there are virtually no similarities and too many deviations.
Posted by: valerie at August 29, 2007 4:25 PM
Valerie, you wrote: “We are talking about 10 times more in fractions, not whole numbers. This changes alot. ”
What??
Posted by: Anonymous at August 29, 2007 11:09 PM
Whoops, forgot to enter my screen name.
Anyway, we may have gotten better at treating cervical tears, we may even have learned to prevent some of them (by not pushing until the cervix is fully dilated, for example), but the fundamental tendency of the cervix to tear during childbirth has not changed.
Posted by: SoMG at August 29, 2007 11:11 PM
SOMG -
In mathmatics .6 is actually six-tenths. And 9.1 is actually 9 and one-tenths. (I know you know this – just the set up) We are comparing those numbers to one hundred thousand NOT one hundred. This means that we are dealing with small numbers that make the difference obsolete. How many maternal deaths from abortions are there? .0006% of all abortions. How many maternal deaths from childbirth? .0091% of all births.
“Valerie, you wrote: “We are talking about 10 times more in fractions, not whole numbers. This changes alot. ”
What??”
What part is confusing you?
Mathmatically is this 10 times more? Yes. Does this mean that you are 10 times more likely to die in childbirth vs abortion? Not really. We are dealing with fractions which means that the possibility of dying for either way to end a pregnancy is less than 1%.
As a society we are not well versed in statitics and how it can be manipulated and twisted. The majority of Americans only know basic math. This means that when you and others say 10 times more likely, the immediate reaction is that for every 10 women that die in childbirth only 1 woman dies from abortion. That is not correct. Why is it not correct? Because we are dealing with one hundred thousand people in the study, not one hundred.
Now, do less women die in abortion than in childbirth? yes. In the concept of death and not injuries a woman is .0085% more likely to die in childbirth. So in reality, a woman is 0.1 times more likely to die in childbirth than in abortion. In fractions that is 10 times more. In whole numbers that is one-tenths times more.
Did that help?
Statistics by any and every organization can be manipulated to represent the outcome that they want. This is not a conspiracy thing, EVERY group, organization, business does this. Just watch commercials.
Posted by: valerie at August 30, 2007 8:15 AM
SOMG – I have more to say, but I have to go grocery shopping before it starts to rain here.
Posted by: valerie at August 30, 2007 8:40 AM
Valerie and SoMG,
This post is about to be dropped…I’m moving you to the Shrimp boat thread…I’ll take the last 6 posts and put them there…
Posted by: mk at August 30, 2007 8:51 AM
Whoo! Human interest story!
I was getting a little bored with all the Aurora stuff, not going to lie.
According to the world of Somg, all abortions are safe, complications are extremly rare, and everyone should have one. Get off it already!
mk, I spent six months researching how abortion morbidity and mortality data are collected in the US. This involved contacting every health department and vital records office, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the Centers for Disease Control. And what I found is that a dead woman has to jump through a lot of hoops to get noticed.
The CDC hasn’t exhibited any real interest in collecting abortion morbidity and mortality data since Willard Cates and David Grimes left the Abortion Surveillance branch in the mid-1970′s. They stopped sending out letters to physicians, hospitals, funeral directors, health officials, etc., asking them to report deaths and started just relying on the National Center for Health Statistics to send everything to them. But the NCHS doesn’t get full data from the states — they get a statistical sample from which to extrapolate, which means that they get good data on major causes of death such as heart attacks and motor vehicle accidents, but not on less common causes such as abortion.
An example of how lackadaisical the CDC is about counting abortion deaths is how they handled — or rather, totally failed to even notice — the death of Latachie Veal. The man who performed the fatal abortion, Robert Crist, discussed the death at a 1992 National Abortion Federation meeting attended by not one but two staffers from the CDC’s abortion surveillance activities. One of those staffers was Lisa Koonin, who was responsible for getting the ball rolling on investigating abortion deaths.
The CDC counted zero — count ‘em, zero — abortion deaths for patients in Latachie’s race and age group for the year she died.
Kevin Sherlock, working entirely out-of-pocket, found dozens of deaths the CDC, with their massive budget and bureaucratic clout, failed to note.
The CDC abortion surveillance team is comprised of hardcore abortion advocates, and they show a persistent pattern of trying to paint abortion in the rosiest possible light. Something that noticing too many deaths is incompatable with.
Oh, for the good old days when Cates and Grimes were there! They were unflagging in their enthusiasm for abortion, but at least they also cared if the women undergoing the procedure lived or died. Which seems to put them at odds with the colleagues they left behind.
Hm… my link for Latachie didn’t work….
Read the whole story. If you can read that and still believe the CDC has any interest in counting abortion deaths, I have some land in Florida I’d like to sell you.
This story hits home for me because, except for the prematurity, my 5th child’s birth went just like that! Not in a hospital (at home with no midwife even), breech, head stuck and without air, needed to be resuscitated (though by then the paramedics had arrived.) In fact, I even live pretty close to Freeport. All I can say is way to go for the shrimp boat captain!! Thank God he was there and had an idea of what to do!
Hey Cristina. Check out my post on the Nazi thread. Full of links about mortality and stuff like that.
What an awesome story!!
MK (Valerie?):First of all, the statement that a woman is ten times more likely to die in childbirth than someone who has an abortion is mathematically correct. However, it is extremely deceptive. We are talking about 10 times more in fractions, not whole numbers. This changes alot. In percentages women who die from abortion is .0006% and women who die from childbirth is .0091%.
It’s not “deceptive,” it’s fact. The exact rates do not matter. Ten or eleven (or 15, from your numbers) times more dangerous for giving birth is just that. It were 91% and 6%. would that somehow be “better”?
……
Most abortions are done in the first trimester, primarily between 8-10 weeks and the first trimester is the safest time to have an abortion. Childbirth is almost always consistent with the 3rd trimester which is a time when most abortions are not done.
How then, with all these deviations can there be an accurate study? All of these inconsistencies only prove one thing in a statistical sense. That abortions should be done at or before 8 weeks gestation in order for it to be safer than childbirth. And since most abortions are performed at this time, then that is where the data of abortion being safer than childbirth has come about. However, the deviations make this almost impossible to determine the accuracy.
That’s incorrect. Even at 16-20 weeks, having an abortion is substantially safer than continuing pregnancies and giving birth.
At 21 weeks and later, abortion is more dangerous, with a morality rate of 8.9 per 100,000 versus 7.1 per 100,000 for giving birth. That increased risk for late-term abortions is included in the overall safety figures for abortion.
……..
Now – the maternal death rates for an 8 week gestational age abortion and 8 week gestational age pregnancy is virtually non-exsistant. However, the older the fetus, the more complications can arise from abortion. and childbirth complications can only be compiled the older the fetus.
In other words, it is impossible to compare the two because there are virtually no similarities and too many deviations.
It’s not impossible at all. There are overall mortality rates for both having abortions and giving birth. If we want to look at specific timeframes, then certainly abortion itself is safer earlier than later, in general. But in no way is it correct to say that it’s only 8 weeks or before where abortion is safer than childbirth. If a pregnant woman’s pregnancy does not end at 8 weeks or before, then it’s a given that risk will increase, whether a later abortion is chosen or if birth is.
If you really want to break it down, the 8 week (and earlier) abortions are some 70 to 100 times safer than continuing pregnancies and giving birth.
By weeks 11 and 12, abortion is some 18 times safer. (88% of abortions are done by week 12.) Weeks 13-15, abortion is 4 times safer, and we’re up to 94-95% of abortions by week 15. And so on to when abortion is actually more dangerous for the woman, overall, than giving birth.
Doug
Doug -
“It’s not “deceptive,” it’s fact. The exact rates do not matter. Ten or eleven (or 15, from your numbers) times more dangerous for giving birth is just that. It were 91% and 6%. would that somehow be “better”?”
I will explain again. This is confusing, I’m not being condescending.
When dealing with statistics one should consider reporting in percentages. This way there is no confusion. Percentages are the comparison of something to 100. Let me explain. If I said 30% of dogs like to hump human legs (sorry – in a weird mood today) that would mean that 30 out of 100 dogs like to hump legs. If I said 30 out of 1,000 dogs like to hump legs, that would be 3% of dogs like to hump legs. If I said 30 dogs out of 10,000 dogs hump legs; that is .3% of dogs hump…… Hopefully that makes sense…
Now for the maternal deaths. For abortion the source that SOMG cited http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/268/22/3231 said that .6 deaths per 100,000 women die in abortions and for deaths in childbirth it was 9.1 per 100,000. Based on the fact that a percentage is something out of 100, lets do the math.
.6 people out of 100,000 = .0006%
9.1 people out of 100,000 = .0091%
Now, lets continue and put these in numbers that we are used to. This means that .000006 out of 100 women die from abortion and .000091 out of 100 women die from childbirth. This is your 10 times more likely. We are dealing with fractions. If this was any other comparison there wouldn’t be one. If a doctor told you that a specific surgery had a .0085% failure rate, would it bother you? That is the difference between abortion and childbirth. A woman is .0085% more likely to die in childbirth than from an abortion.
(In the above post I said that in reality the difference is .1 times more likely not 10 times more likely. I have been told by my husband that this is inncorrect. Sorry. It is still 10 times more likey, but that ten times is only .0085% ; it doesn’t sound as bad when put in percentages does it? This means that abortion and childbirth have virtually the same amount of risk of death.)
More on your comments in a moment…. I have to check in on my kids…..way to quiet here…
Doug -
“It’s not “deceptive,” it’s fact. The exact rates do not matter. Ten or eleven (or 15, from your numbers) times more dangerous for giving birth is just that. It were 91% and 6%. would that somehow be “better”?”
I will explain again. This is confusing, I’m not being condescending.
When dealing with statistics one should consider reporting in percentages. This way there is no confusion. Percentages are the comparison of something to 100. Let me explain. If I said 30% of dogs like to hump human legs (sorry – in a weird mood today) that would mean that 30 out of 100 dogs like to hump legs. If I said 30 out of 1,000 dogs like to hump legs, that would be 3% of dogs like to hump legs. If I said 30 dogs out of 10,000 dogs hump legs; that is .3% of dogs hump…… Hopefully that makes sense…
Now for the maternal deaths. For abortion the source that SOMG cited said that .6 deaths per 100,000 women die in abortions and for deaths in childbirth it was 9.1 per 100,000. Based on the fact that a percentage is something out of 100, lets do the math.
.6 people out of 100,000 = .0006%
9.1 people out of 100,000 = .0091%
Now, lets continue and put these in numbers that we are used to. This means that .000006 out of 100 women die from abortion and .000091 out of 100 women die from childbirth. This is your 10 times more likely. We are dealing with fractions. If this was any other comparison there wouldn’t be one. If a doctor told you that a specific surgery had a .0085% failure rate, would it bother you? That is the difference between abortion and childbirth. A woman is .0085% more likely to die in childbirth than from an abortion.
(In the above post I said that in reality the difference is .1 times more likely not 10 times more likely. I have been told by my husband that this is inncorrect. Sorry. It is still 10 times more likey, but that ten times is only .0085% ; it doesn’t sound as bad when put in percentages does it? This means that abortion and childbirth have virtually the same amount of risk of death.)
More on your comments in a moment…. I have to check in on my kids…..way to quiet here…
(This may post twice.. I originally put in the link to the JAMA website that SOMG cited but for some reason, it won’t let me post it…So I took out the link and hopefully it will post.)
I hope there is no brain damage from oxygen deprivation. I’ve got to wonder about anyone who would go out on a shrimp boat when she was that far along into a pregnancy to begin with.
According to the world of Somg, all abortions are safe, complications are extremly rare, and everyone should have one. Get off it already!
******************************************
No one is saying ‘everyone should’ have an abortion. Why do antichoicers have to lie? What is it about the truth that bothers them so much that they have to resort to lies and misinformation and hysterical melodramatic moronic garbage rather than deal with the truth?
Doug -
“That’s incorrect. Even at 16-20 weeks, having an abortion is substantially safer than continuing pregnancies and giving birth.
At 21 weeks and later, abortion is more dangerous, with a morality rate of 8.9 per 100,000 versus 7.1 per 100,000 for giving birth. That increased risk for late-term abortions is included in the overall safety figures for abortion.”
According to: greenjournal.org/cgi/content/full/103/4/729
(I took out the www. in hopes this will post the first time)
“Gestational age at the time of abortion was the strongest risk factor for abortion-related mortality (Table 2). The lowest rates were among women who had their abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, particularly within the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. Women whose abortions were performed in the second trimester (at or after 13 weeks of gestation) had abortion-related mortality rates greater than women whose abortions were performed in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy (RR at 13
FYI – in case anyone wants to know….
The quiet house was because of:
Danny taking every diaper out of the box of 180 diapers.
Catherine taking all of her cloths out of her dresser.
I wonder what put me in the weird mood?
Texasred:
This isn’t being melodramic or hysterical…….its just our relationship we have with him.. It’s really difficult to explain. It’s sort of a love/hate; recpect/disrespect; like to talk to/hate it when he’s here type relationship….
“No one is saying ‘everyone should’ have an abortion. Why do antichoicers have to lie? What is it about the truth that bothers them so much that they have to resort to lies and misinformation and hysterical melodramatic moronic garbage rather than deal with the truth?”
Ya just don’t understand our relationship with SOMG do you?
And actually Texas,
SoMG is the one that put forth the ‘false” numbers. Val just corrected them. So if any one was misrepresenting the truth (although I think in this case it was accidental) it was the pro-choice side.
To listen to SoMG you would think that having an abortion was never dangerous and giving birth was akin to holding a nine iron in a thunderstorm!
And yet now we find, that they are almost equal…I’m going to have to save that post. It was phenomenal!
The quiet house was because of:
Danny taking every diaper out of the box of 180 diapers.
Catherine taking all of her cloths out of her dresser.
I wonder what put me in the weird mood?
Valerie, it sounds like you’ve been living in my house! haha
Bethany -
I thought training my giant breed dogs and keeping them behaved was going to keep me on my toes. Nope. The two smallest members of my family do that!
Erin, 8:59a, said: “Whoo! Human interest story! I was getting a little bored with all the Aurora stuff, not going to lie.”
Truth be told, I was, too. On my last Aurora post I deleted, “Ok, I’m Aurora-ed out for awhile,” because I didn’t want people to think I didn’t care. But I made up my mind to get up this morning and post on anything but Aurora today. But that was today…
Valerie: “Gestational age at the time of abortion was the strongest risk factor for abortion-related mortality (Table 2). The lowest rates were among women who had their abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, particularly within the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. Women whose abortions were performed in the second trimester (at or after 13 weeks of gestation) had abortion-related mortality rates greater than women whose abortions were performed in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy (RR at 13
.6 people out of 100,000 = .0006%
9.1 people out of 100,000 = .0091%
Valerie: Now, lets continue and put these in numbers that we are used to. This means that .000006 out of 100 women die from abortion and .000091 out of 100 women die from childbirth. This is your 10 times more likely. We are dealing with fractions. If this was any other comparison there wouldn’t be one. If a doctor told you that a specific surgery had a .0085% failure rate, would it bother you? That is the difference between abortion and childbirth. A woman is .0085% more likely to die in childbirth than from an abortion.
(In the above post I said that in reality the difference is .1 times more likely not 10 times more likely. I have been told by my husband that this is inncorrect. Sorry. It is still 10 times more likey, but that ten times is only .0085% ; it doesn’t sound as bad when put in percentages does it? This means that abortion and childbirth have virtually the same amount of risk of death.)
More on your comments in a moment…. I have to check in on my kids…..way too quiet here…
Ha! I hear you – I have 21 nieces and nephews and most times it’s a wild mob scene when any number of them are together. When there is a distinct lack of noise you had best saddle up….
Yes, we are dealing with fractions. And no – a failure rate of .0085% wouldn’t be a big deal to me, if I wanted the procedure done. Sounds like an acceptable risk to me. I don’t think most women really worry about the dangers when they willingly continue a wanted pregnancy. Nor do I think the should really be worried about it. Same for women having abortions – the risk (quite a bit lower than for giving birth, usually) is acceptable, IMO.
You’re making some mathematical mistakes, though. 9.1 out of 100,000 is actually 15.16666…. times more likely than .6 out of 100,000.
And while neither giving birth nor having abortions, in general, present a large amount of deaths for women relative to the number of cases, 15 times more risky is still 15 times more risky.
Doug
Are you sure that’s not Tom Hanks?