The leftward and other blatherings of Span (now with Snaps!)

Thursday, November 10, 2005

the other rate that dropped today

No not unemployment (although that's good too).

The abortion rate dropped in 2004 for the first time since 1998.

For my previous rant on abortion, see Aborting Abortion.

6 comments:

stephen said...

I have a horrible suspicion about this.

If you look at the breakdown by ethnic group, it says:

"There was a marginal drop in abortions among Maori and Pacific Islanders, a slight increase among Europeans and a marked drop among Asian women."

Mmmm. Fewer Asian ESL students = fewer sad and naive young women without Mummy and Daddy looking out for them = fewer abortions. I bet you if the NZ dollar drops and we've rehabilitated the language schools, we'll see an equivalent increase...

Span said...

unfortunately that's quite possible SJ. i think it will be very interesting to see if they have dropped in 2005 too (which assumedly we won't know for another year) in terms of the impact of the Hubba Hubba campaign.

although i'm pro-choice i'm even more pro-proper sex ed and encouraging people to make healthy choices about their (sex) lives that mean they can avoid having to make that other choice.

Anonymous said...

Hi span,

serious question then. I read your other post on 'pro-life' 'pro-choice' etc and I really don't get it. I'm not religious, but it seems to me that the information is quite clear, when a male's sperm fertilizes the female egg a third person is created. At that point it ceases to be a question about the woman's body, or the man's rights, it is about the rights of the child, no matter whether 3hrs old, or 3yrs old, that is the part of the point of the laws of society, to protect those who cannot protect themselves, it is not anyones 'right' to take the life of that child, or so it seems to me.

Todd

radar said...

Span, I will reply to a question you asked me at the whig's blog; he has an annoying function now making it hard to comment.

Anyway, you took my murder point too literally. I was just saying that just because something will always happen - like rape, murder, abortions, whatever - that doesn't mean that we should just accept it, regulate it, and move on. The Whig's point was moronic, in my opinion.

stephen said...

How hard is it to Google "Abortion Supervisory Committee?"

Because I'm feeling particularly kind and have run out of things to do just now, I can tell you it is expressed in terms of abortions "per 1,000 estimated mean female population in each age group."

It's also common to compare it to the number of live births, but I don't think our ASC does that.

Last year's report is here:

http://www.clerk.parliament.govt.nz/Content/Parliamentary-Papers/E.282004.pdf

The stats are at the end.

Span said...

sorry for the long time replying - i have been a bit distracted by other things. i could hardly put it better than stef over on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty (paraphrasing by me) that a foetus is the potential for life, and it's rights do not come ahead of an actual life.
http://capitalismbad.blogspot.com/2005/11/bits-and-pieces-on-abortion.html