No, El Salvador’s abortion ban is not the cause of teen suicides
In countries where abortion is currently illegal, abortion advocates tend to exploit the “hard cases” (rape, incest, life of the mother) to use as weapons in their battle to liberalize abortion law.
The “women’s health” movement’s end goal isn’t really the betterment of women in general – it’s the removal of all roadblocks to abortion. And countries who resist the worldwide death march are often under immense international pressure to change their stance on the sanctity of human life.
Case in point: El Salvador, where, as Fox News reports, “girls aged 10 to 19 account[ed] for nearly a third of all pregnancies in the country last year.”
Read that again. Ages 10 to 19.
More from Fox:
Under Salvadoran law, it is a crime to have sex with a child under the age of 15, but activists say the law is frequently flouted, citing official figures that show 1,540 girls under 15 became pregnant in El Salvador last year.
The offense carries a prison sentence of between 14 and 20 years, but few perpetrators are sent to jail.
[Mario] Soriano [of the country’s health ministry] said a 1998 total ban on abortion has led many pregnant girls to contemplate suicide or a backstreet termination rather than risk rejection from their families, friends and teachers.
“A pregnant girl is often discriminated against. She can find herself kicked out of the house and dumped by her boyfriend, so family is not seen as a source of help. She’s also expelled from school because she’s seen as setting a bad example to other pupils,” Soriano said.
Wow, sounds like the solution would be to actually enforce the laws and perhaps put forth some educational and outreach efforts to help these young women, who are obviously being victimized. But the “women’s health” movement has a different idea. Soriano continues:
El Salvador’s abortion law is one of the most restrictive in the world. At the health ministry, we’re aware of the need to modify the abortion law.
So let’s get this straight: the law is flouted, perpetrators are walking the streets freely, and pregnant girls – not their rapists – are the ones who are discriminated against and ostracized. And the solution is abortion?
How would killing innocent parties help these young women?
The article goes on to say – only as an afterthought to liberalizing abortion law – that perhaps the government should also try to address the rape issue with Salvadoran men. Well, there’s a thought.
So no, I would argue that after 16 years of an abortion ban, this is NOT what’s driving these pregnant teens to suicide.
What’s driving them to suicide is the culture that won’t allow them, as women, to stand against their rapists without fear of reprisal. It’s the culture that ostracizes pregnant teens instead of helping them. It’s the culture that treats rape victims as “bad examples” and second-class citizens. It’s the culture that calls a preborn child conceived in rape “the rapist’s baby” and “cursed” instead of viewing that baby as a person, wholly separate from his/her father and his crimes.
These are the factors that drive women to desperation.
Legalizing abortion would not save a single one of these young women from demoralizing abuse. In fact, it may subject them to it even further, as evidence of the crime can easily be “covered up,” as we’ve seen right here in America.
The liberal “wisdom” of the day insists that children are “sexual beings” (thanks, Alfred Kinsey) and that maybe pedophilia and incest aren’t as harmful as we once thought… and yet, these twisted “experts” have left and will continue to leave broken children in their wake – children whom they were supposed to protect and nurture, not treat as sexual objects.
Killing the children of these victimized children is not the solution. Death is not the solution to death.
[Photo, bottom left, via Orphan’s Promise, one organization helping to provide housing for teenage moms in El Salvador; top photo via archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com]
The mercy of the wicked is cruel.
Proverbs 12:10
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Legalizing abortion in El Salvador would be a boon to child molesters like it is here where they regularly take their victims to Planned Parenthood for no questions asked abortions.
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We already know that post-abortive women suffer an increased risk of suicide.
Keeping all of the other evils constant in a culture that exploits young girls and then adding abortion to the mix…. only brings an increase in suicides of teenage girls.
Women deserve better from us.
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I just love how, in these people’s minds, the sole responsibility for everything lands on the woman.
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We already know that post-abortive women suffer an increased risk of suicide. – with no link indicating cause. Therefore any claims of abortion causing an increase in suicides is unsupported.
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Abortion is a traumatic experience, all by itself. And abortion usually occurs in a life that is also suffering from sexual trauma, low self-esteem, coercion, drug and alcohol abuse, …..
No one is surprised that post-abortive women are at higher risk of suicide, just as no one was surprised that cigarette smoking brings higher health risks. And yet… it was also no surprise that those who profit from abortion and cigarettes keep insisting that their products are safe and necessary, and “there is no conclusive proof that they are dangerous.”
All we have are studies and testimonies and statistical data. No proof yet…. cigarettes may yet turn out to be as safe as abortion!
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Reality, here’s a link from a pro-choice study. The study is focused on women who were pressured to abort, not all post-abortive women, but concluded that 64% of women who seek abortion felt pressure to do so and that within that group women are 6-7 times more likely to commit suicide than women who gave birth. So for at least 2/3s of post-abortive women, the correlation is documented.
http://www.publiceye.org/ark/reproductive-justice/articles/forced-abortions-america.php
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Abortion is a traumatic experience, all by itself. – not usually, but in a few cases.
And abortion usually occurs in a life that is also suffering from sexual trauma, low self-esteem, coercion, drug and alcohol abuse, ….. – sometimes perhaps, not ‘usually’. Unless you can clearly demonstrate your ideologically driven claim as being at all valid?
No one is surprised that post-abortive women are at higher risk of suicide, just as no one was surprised that cigarette smoking brings higher health risks. – aren’t they? You’ve completed a poll and quantitative analysis to back this claim? Even if ‘no one is surprised’ it still fails to demonstrate abortion as being a causative factor.
And yet… it was also no surprise that those who profit from abortion and cigarettes keep insisting that their products are safe and necessary, and “there is no conclusive proof that they are dangerous.” – and in regards to abortion they are correct.
All we have are studies and testimonies and statistical data. No proof yet…. cigarettes may yet turn out to be as safe as abortion! – you haven’t looked very far or hard have you.
Your numbers simply don’t add up Rachel. The study is ‘focused on women who were pressured to abort, not all post-abortive women’ yet attempts to conclude that that means that 64% of women seeking abortion are pressured. How? And then leaps to them being 6-7 times more likely to suicide? Based on what?
So for at least 2/3s of post-abortive women, the correlation is documented. – well 2/3s is a fairly wild claim based on the way the study was conducted. There’s also the fact that correlation =/= cause.
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Hi Del,
I have to ask. Couldn’t sexual trauma, low self esteem, coercion, and drug and alcohol abuse by themselves be contributing factors to suicide?
I think we have to be careful here. Yes abortion may be the causative factor, but so could a number of other factors, or a combination of them.
For instance, I may believe there is a breast cancer/abortion link. However I will still advise people exercise caution about claiming a study “proves” the link. No study proves anything. All studies are subject to counterstudies and any good researcher knows their findings will be challenged.
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You are right, Mary. In fact, this is exactly the argument that the abortion industry makes. “If you are upset by your abortion, it is because you were messed up before the abortion. Don’t blame us; we only gave you the help that you asked for.”
We need to do better for women in our culture. We need to stop using them as objects.
Abortion perpetuates the child abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, trafficking and exploitation. Ending abortion is a step toward protecting women.
And let us never forget, we also have a duty to protect the children from murder.
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Well said, Del!
One of the reasons that abortion is more traumatic is the missing human being, whose absence lingers, like a lost parent or lost sibling. The post abortive mother knows that someONE is gone, and even if you’ve been coerced, many women wish they’d resisted more. Silentnomore is full of first person testimonials. It’s heavier on the conscience that having been the recipient of abuse for example, which yes, is also a contributing factor to a young woman’s suicidal crisis.
You can see how little abortionists care about women’s health, by the way they also completely disregard her mental health.
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What would it take to prove a connection between abortion and suicide? It would take an experiment that controls all other influences, and one where the experimenters manipulate/vary the suspected causal influence.
You would have to get a whole bunch of teenage women – before the age where pregnancy and abortion typically begins.
So, maybe those at the age of 14.
The study group would have to be free of mental problems at baseline, and there also would have to be no notable family history of suicidality or mental illness.
With this group, you would randomize half to the abortion condition and half to the non-abortion condition. Randomization spreads all the unknown influences fairly evenly between the two groups.
All would then get pregnant.
One group would end their pregnancies with abortion.
The other half would carry their pregnancy to term.
The experimenters would then have to follow up for some years in order for the suspected effect, suicide, to occur as it will across time.
After some span of time, say five years, the experimenters would compare suicide rates in those who aborted and those who did not.
If the rate is greater in the abortion-experience group, then the conclusion is that abortion causally leads to suicide.
Until this study happens, the pro-choice advocates can claim that no study proves the abortion-suicide risk relation.
This exact situation is why the tobacco lobbyists could for years claim, and can STILL claim if they want, that smoking does not cause lung cancer.
Establishing smoking as a cause of lung cancer was the result of examining a variety of findings, and finding that the conclusion “always comes up peanuts;” always points to the smoking-lung cancer connection.
If a pro-choice advocate makes this claim that proof is necessary before any conclusions are made, they are either parroting talking points that they have been fed (most likely) or they are being disingenuous.
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Hi Del,
I regret that you are missing my point. As I said, I am personally convinced there is a breast cancer/abortion link. We have to keep in mind though that studies supporting a link will be challenged, and studies will be produced showing no connection. We are all left to do our own research and draw our own conclusions.
You may be of the firm conviction there is a suicide/abortion link, and there may well be one. But what you or I think doesn’t matter, we have to back it up with carefully controlled studies if people are going to take these claims seriously.
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Hi TheLastDemocrat,
That pretty much sums it up. If people are going to take your claims seriously, then its not unreasonable to ask for sources to back those claims, or for meticulously done studies.
Don’t we do that on this blog all the time? Do you just take what anyone says as gospel?
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They’re not my numbers. If you follow the link, it says that it found 64% of women seeking abortion felt pressured to abort. So, if you took 100 women seeking an abortion, 64 would have experienced pressure to seek it. Of those 64 women, after they aborted, the suicide rate was between 6 and 7 times higher than among post partum women (the control group). How does that not add up?
Obviously, that says nothing about the remaining 36 women who sought abortion. However, post partum depression is common among women who miscarry, and the same hormones are at play after abortion. At the very least, I would expect suicide to be as common among that remainder as it is among post partum women, and that is a rate that is higher than that among the general populace.
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Abortion perpetuates the child abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, trafficking and exploitation. Ending abortion is a step toward protecting women. – no, ending the subjugation and inequality women face by those who wish to control them is what will protect women. The abuses and exploitation were both prevalent and silent in times when women could not vote, hold a bank account or have power in regards to their own bodies.
One of the reasons that abortion is more traumatic is the missing human being, whose absence lingers, like a lost parent or lost sibling. – except that in the overwhelming majority of cases relief is the feeling, not trauma.
Rachel, the studies are both old and voluntary, not an assessment of all the women who met the criteria. That those who reported being pressured exhibited a higher suicide rate is nothing more than correlative. There is no demonstrated cause or link. The same hormones may possibly be at play but the mindsets related to unintended miscarriage and intended termination are significantly different.
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Thank you for this! I knew that article was nonsense when I saw it and it’s often so sad to me to see this articles stand without anyone calling attention to their utter absurdity.
God bless all the poor children who are dehumanized because of their fathers’ sins!
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Reality, 8:22PM
“except that in the overwhelming majority of cases relief is the feeling, not trauma”.
Do you have any sources or studies to support this statement?
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All your reasoning is broken, if in the end, is legislation that makes a choice for a woman. Women have to have control of their lives and bodies. It is a divine right to be able to choose your actions to your dying day. If God is against abortion, then judgement and punishment is up to Him, not you. Get it through your heads that you are not Gods! If we follow your reasoning, you should legislate vasectomies. As that is also a form of abortion. You could not in a life time accomplish your mission to ban abortions. But it seems to be directed to women only. If your conception of God is that He is all powerful, then if He wills a soul to be embodied and born ,He will see to it that it happens, no matter how many aborted tries it has to go through. He commands you to be compassionate and non-judgemental. You and your desire to tell woman what to do, are under more condemnation thatn any woman having an abortion.
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Marta Garcia,
A divine right to be able to choose your actions to your dying day. Does this include rape, murder, wife abuse? In our lifetime will any of us see an end to these actions? Does that mean they should be legalized? If God wills someone not to be a victim, they won’t be, right?
Do you agree if God is against these actions, then we should leave punishment to Him?
I fail to see how vasectomies are a form of abortion.
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“If we follow your reasoning, you should legislate vasectomies. As that is also a form of abortion.”
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/250×250/54977760.jpg
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It’s within the sources or studies that 9ek used regarding her claims of trauma and suicide Mary. The ones which don’t support what she said. You’d be familiar with that wouldn’t you :-)
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Reality,
Please provide a source or studies to back your claim that the overwhelming majority of women feel relief after an abortion and not trauma.
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“Make outlandish claim or construct nonsensical scenario then demand that others dismantle them” is not the way it works Mary. Despite your habitual efforts otherwise.
Despite the repeated claims that women are traumatized by abortion or that it impacts on suicide rates no proof has been served up to support such.
The fact that so many women have an abortion and just get on with their lives and how many have more than one, it’s no wonder the evidence for claims of widespread trauma etc. is conspicuous by its absence.
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Reality,
You made the claim that most women feel relief after an abortion, please give the source or studies you base it on.
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Also Reality, what specifically do you mean by “overwhelming majority”? Is this 95%, 99%. 80%? A source for this too please.
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No Mary, Del and 9ek made claims regarding trauma and suicide following abortion. I have disputed their claims. So unless the claims made can be supported by evidence they are obviously no more than ideological imaginings. I hope that one day you will come to recognize that it is the initial claimants responsibility to support their claim, not demand that anyone who disputes their claim disprove it as is your usual tactic.
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Reality,
You can dispute their claims or consider them invalid, but that does not prove the “overwhelming majority of women feel relief”. They may feel sadness, regret, loss, depression, none of which will necessarily be traumatic or lead to suicide, and they may very well continue on with their lives.
You specifically mention “relief”. Please show us a source to back up this claim and please specify what “overwhelming majority” consists of and on what you base this claim.
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Try as you may Mary, your constant striving to put the cart before the horse won’t find me climbing aboard.
Let them provide proof of their claims and we can take it from there.
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Reality,
“Except that in the overwhelming majority of cases relief is the feeling, not trauma”.
How do you know specifically what emotion the “overwhelming majority” of aborted women experience? Source?
What percentage of aborted women comprise the “overwhelming majority” that you are referring to? Source?
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How do you know specifically what emotion the “overwhelming majority” of aborted women experience? Source? – try asking those who made the first claims in regard to this. That’ll be your starting point.
You could ask them about percentages too. Might not be wise to hold your breath waiting though, no one’s been able to demonstrate claims of abundant trauma and increased suicide due to abortion yet.
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Reality,
I’m asking you. How do you know for a fact the “overwhelming majority” of aborted women experience “relief” and not other emotions such as sadness, loss, or depression? These emotions wouldn’t necessarily make these women suicidal.
Also, you used the term “overwhelming majority”. Please be specific.
What you’re doing Reality is making a leap. The other posters could not show an abortion/suicide link to your satisfaction but that does not in itself prove the “overwhelming majority” of aborted women feel only “relief”. That’s why I ask you for studies or sources to back your claim.
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The other posters could not show an abortion/suicide link to your satisfaction but that does not in itself prove the “overwhelming majority” of aborted women feel only “relief”. – actually they couldn’t show anything for a raft of claims that were made, not just the claimed abortion/suicide link.
No, ‘leaps’ are such things as ‘culture of death’, ‘Abortion is a traumatic experience, all by itself’, ‘Abortion perpetuates the child abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, trafficking and exploitation’ and ‘One of the reasons that abortion is more traumatic is the missing human being, whose absence lingers, like a lost parent or lost sibling’. Where are the ‘studies or sources’?
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Well Reality,
You couldn’t show anything for the claim you made either.
“Where are the ‘studies or sources’?
One can ask you the same question.
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Then why don’t those who made the original claims provide something to support those claims, something which may also disprove my disputing their claims with what is obvious. But they never do.
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Reality,
You will have to ask them.
If you check I pointed out to a poster the importance of sourcing what he said.
I think I have been fair in asking for sources from both sides of this particular discussion.
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LOL
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Reality,
I refer you to the following posts:
Nov.13th, 8:26PM
Nov.14th, 5:21PM and 5:25PM
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Why?
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To point out that I have been fair in asking for sources from both sides. I assumed you were laughing about that comment. If I was wrong, my apologies.
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Your 8:26PM comment didn’t ask anyone for sources. You advised caution about claiming a study proves a link. The other two gently advised that it’s not unreasonable to expect sources.
Of me, you made specific demands.
So, LOL
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Reality,
I was supporting your request for sources. I did not think it unreasonable. I advised caution about studies being considered the final word on anything, yes. I do that often, especially when I see people jump on a study and say “see, see, this proves thus and such”. I gently advised the other two its not unreasonable(of you or anyone) to expect sources. Exactly, it isn’t. You were not being unreasonable. You will see that one of the posters also became quite annoyed with me for saying that. I responded that if people are to take claims seriously, they must be backed up with carefully controlled studies. Again, supporting your request.
I asked you for a source for your statement. I demanded nothing. You gave me the run around so I had to keep asking. If you don’t have a source, fine. Say so.
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Aw, aren’t you so sweet :-)
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Well yes, as a matter of fact I am! :)
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