[gruez]

1. where are you getting "deaths of thousands of young women" from? According to the CDC the mortality rate associated with live births is 23.8 per 100,000. In the US there are only 629,898 abortions per year. Multiply those numbers out, and you only get 150 deaths.

2. even if you accept that there would be "deaths of thousands of young women", I doubt those deaths would sway the opinion of someone who thinks each abortion is murder (ie. 629,898 "deaths" from abortion vs "thousands" of "deaths")

[lamontcg]

> 1. where are you getting "deaths of thousands of young women" from? According to the CDC the mortality rate associated with live births is 23.8 per 100,000. In the US there are only 629,898 abortions per year. Multiply those numbers out, and you only get 150 deaths.

backalley abortions.

i'm 100% anti-clotheshanger.

it is interesting that a lot of people on this site need to be intellectually spoonfed into understanding that this is the major issue that most pro-choice people focus on.

you can't magically turn all those abortions into unproblematic births without seeing deaths due to backalley abortions. it is like arguing that by banning drugs you can make drug use go away. you just discount the desperation those women are under and consider them criminals and are okay with the stochastic death penalty.

[gruez]

>backalley abortions.

thanks for clarifying, but I still need a source for the "deaths of thousands of young women" claim. The best I could find with a cursory search is:

"In Brazil, where abortion is also illegal, it’s estimated that 250,000 women are hospitalized from complications from abortions, and about 200 women a year die from the complications"

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/how-many-...

>it is interesting that a lot of people on this site need to be intellectually spoonfed into understanding that this is the major issue that most pro-choice people focus on.

Or maybe you should clearly state what the basis of your numbers are the first time around, rather than asserting a number and letting your reader figure out what the basis is?

[notacoward]

You're sea-lioning, or what the guidelines call cross-examining. No set time period was specified. Even the per-annum numbers already cited add up to thousands over a decade or two. Also, you seem to be demanding precision when you haven't even specified a threshold you would find acceptable. Is it OK for you that "merely" hundreds of women die needlessly? Instead of trying to make others chase your ever-receding goalposts, perhaps you should try making your own persuasive argument.

[gruez]

>You're sea-lioning, or what the guidelines call cross-examining. No set time period was specified. Even the per-annum numbers already cited add up to thousands over a decade or two.

Claiming that no time period was specified makes the statement true, but also makes the statement so weak that it doesn't really mean anything.

>Also, you seem to be demanding precision when you haven't even specified a threshold you would find acceptable. Is it OK for you that "merely" hundreds of women die needlessly? Instead of trying to make others chase your ever-receding goalposts, perhaps you should try making your own persuasive argument.

I already have, in my previous comment.

>2. even if you accept that there would be "deaths of thousands of young women", I doubt those deaths would sway the opinion of someone who thinks each abortion is murder (ie. 629,898 "deaths" from abortion vs "thousands" of "deaths")

[notacoward]

> also makes the statement so weak that it doesn't really mean anything.

That might be a good-faith argument if we were allowing eons, but we're actually talking about years to (at most) decades.

> I already have, in my previous comment.

No, not really. You've regurgitated a number, but only as an appeal to emotion. You haven't connected it to the subject of this thread, which is the idea that even a fully formed human has no right to require physical sacrifice of another. Persuasion means connecting things in a way that might sway an interlocutor, not merely bashing them over the head with claims that you find compelling.

[gruez]

>No, not really. You've regurgitated a number, but only as an appeal to emotion.

uhh what? I'm not advocating for one side or another. I'm only pointing out that if you think that aborted fetuses are "deaths", then a few extra thousand deaths pales in comparison to the number of "deaths" from abortions.

>You haven't connected it to the subject of this thread, which is the idea that even a fully formed human has no right to require physical sacrifice of another.

1. That's an nice argument and all, but it certainly wasn't in "the subject of this thread". I traversed through all the parent comments and couldn't find any comment that made an argument to that effect.

2. since we're already bringing this topic up, the obvious response I can think of would be: really? no "physical sacrifice" whatsoever? What about mask/vaccine mandates, which require some token/small amount of sacrifice? Obviously wearing something over your face/getting jabbed isn't equivalent to carrying a baby to term, but the argument (at least as you presented it) seems to take an absolutist position rather than some sort of cost-benefit analysis one.

>Persuasion means connecting things in a way that might sway an interlocutor, not merely bashing them over the head with claims that you find compelling.

Again, you seem to think I'm trying to convince people that abortions are bad. However, if you read my original comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31883521) more carefully, see that I'm only trying to point out that the "deaths of thousands of young women" argument isn't persuasive.

[notacoward]

> the mortality rate associated with live births is 23.8 per 100,000

You can't just take the number for live births and apply it to abortions. The actual number from people who making direct observations instead of committing statistical malpractice seem to be around 0.7 deaths per 100K abortions. The authors say it might be even lower; there's certainly no rational reason to believe it has gotten worse since the last numbers were made available. (BTW I do wonder why they're no longer available, and suspect political pressure was involved much as with tracking gun deaths.)

https://scdhec.gov/risks-abortion

Besides considering the difference between safe vs. unsafe abortions, a real comparison of abortion vs. live-birth death rates would also have to consider pregnancies that end in miscarriage, and the fact that the availability of safe abortion in high-risk cases improves prognoses for live birth. A particularly instructive example is Romania, which saw abortion death rate go from 20/100K to 148/100K when abortion was restricted in 1966, and then back down to 9/100K after the restrictions were removed in 1989.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709326/

BTW note that the abortion death rate in 1965 Romania was lower than the live-birth death rate in modern US. It's currently a safer option for the mother in a great many cases, but would become much worse if it had to go underground, and some of us think that matters.

[paulryanrogers]

If abortions are illegal it may lead to reckless attempts more dangerous than giving birth. The exact rate may be difficult to quantify as reporting may be unreliable.

I agree it'll be nearly impossible to convince people who already see abortion as murder.

[heavyset_go]

The first is a result of sample and survivor bias, given that pregnancies with complications were aborted. Also, 1 in 50 pregnancies are ectopic.