| I am aware of what the article says. The bit you quoted does not negate my two points about the data in that article. But just to be very clear, Connecticut is cited as having an infant mortality rate that is slightly above the comparison country rates. Note that those countries were picked for a comparison because they have the 6 lowest mortality rates in Europe. [1] Anyway, Connecticut is maybe somewhat similar to the comparison countries in terms of ethnic group demographics (mostly negating my point (2)) and has a more expansive definition of "infant mortality" than those countries last I checked, which is part of my point (1). Mississippi, at the other end of the spectrum, has a vastly different ethnic makeup, has much worse abortion availability (increasing the number of babies with birth defects carried to term). And still has the more expansive definition of "infant mortality". Now I'm not saying that it's a good thing that Mississippi has higher rates of SUID/SIDS. And I'm not saying limited abortion availability for cases when the child wouldn't survive is good. But I am saying that drawing conclusions about US healthcare here, as opposed to other societal factors, requires apples-to-apples comparison. And drawing conclusions about outcomes for a specific case (specific family) requires understanding whether those societal factors apply to it. Or to put it another way, families that are willing to do an abortion when told their child, if carried to term, would not live more than a few months will have a lower infant mortality rate than families that are not willing to do said abortion. One other thing which _is_ mentioned in the study itself but not in the article: "survival rates among preterm infants in the US were found to be very similar to those of the same European countries". Please model that with the "the US just sucks" model. [1] The numbers in the actual study: Connecticut has an estimated FTIMR of 1.29 with a 95% confidence interval of 1.08 - 1.53; note that they don't have an actual hard number for reasons I haven't figured out yet. The six European countries involved are Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. Their numbers range from 0.97 to 1.24 according to the study. |