I don’t understand Bryan’s interest in this study. He seems to be nitpicking. For example:
“ The key point, however, is that the self-reported measures of mental well-being ought to capture all of these moderate downsides. Foster’s finding is not that women denied an abortion have the same long-run overall life satisfaction as other women with the same financial and health problems. Her finding is that women denied abortion have the same long-run overall life satisfaction as otherwise similar women who got abortions and therefore avoided those financial and health problems. Upshot: The subjective gains of unplanned parenthood offset the objective problems of unplanned parenthood.”
How people feel is important, but so fundamentally subjective as to be of limited comparative value. There are studies of people experiencing severe trauma like the loss of a limb, spouse, or child. They seem to find that most people bounce back and are about as happy as they were before the loss. It would be foolish to conclude that the losses don’t matter because overall happiness in the subjects isn’t much different in the long run.
In the quote Bryan seems to say that while the women denied abortions are measurably poorer, that doesn’t really matter because they are about as happy as women who got abortions.
I mean, I presume Foster thinks women should have a fundamental right to bodily autonomy on purely philosophical grounds and therefore isn't going to base her ultimate policy proposals on a hypothetical sliding scale of misery. Why would she? If you think some practice is a positive social good for a wide range of reasons, then of course you'll always support it, but there's still nothing odd about highlighting what harms prohibitions do cause.
“Beyond the financial burden, taking away women’s agency to determine when and with whom they have children fundamentally changes their life trajectory”
This framing really grates on me. If we take the premise that choosing to have sex with someone is not enough to give the kind of agency she’s talking about, how does it never occur to people who frame the abortion debate on these terms that this is precisely the reality that men face in whatever abortion policy regime society chooses? I hate to sound like a men’s rights activist, but I also spent a fair bit of my hornier years acutely aware that once I had sex with someone, I had absolutely zero control over whether I was going to become a father, child support payments and all. Keep in mind, I wouldn’t advocate giving men the kind of “reproductive freedom” that abortion activists say is fundamental—I think that would unduly interfere with women’s bodily autonomy. But I also think there should be some way for a man to say, during the period when a woman does have a legal right to get an abortion, that the financial decision is hers alone.
Because abortion right is about medical decision regarding their body. It makes sense that women are often the one who exercise this right because they are the one carrying the child.
What’s your point? That’s exactly why I said I think concerns of bodily autonomy trump the idea of “reproductive freedom” as described in the quote at the top of my comment. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that nobody thinks “agency to determine when and with whom to have children” in order to prevent adverse “changes [in] their life trajectory” doesn’t seem to carry any weight when it comes to men. My point is that nobody thinks all people should be given that level of control over their reproduction.
I mean, that is not an equivalence. In this abortion access world, women get to have sex without risk of being forced to parent, and men do not. I personally think that's moral, but it is not balanced.
Is it possible there is a selection bias in the women who were rejected vs allowed abortions? Rather than being random, could the women who were rejected be generally less informed/educated, given that they were potentially unaware of the cutoff? Vs the women who received the abortion may have been debating what to do up to the deadline but ended up coming in before it was too late?
yes, there are tons of biases in this study. The "denied abortion" group was yonger, more likely to come from enviorments of abuse or neglect, etc etc. Also, about half were lost to follow up....etc etc
Foster is kind of a paradox. She seemed to design Turnaway to be objective, but like a fish in water, she can't see how her own views cause her to frame the results in such a biased way.
ANSIRH definitely downplays these Turnaway findings, though. They have a website about the Turnaway Study that fails to mention the mental health outcomes of the women who were turned away (https://www.ansirh.org/research/ongoing/turnaway-study). The website includes a summary of Turnaway Publications that also somehow doesn't mention this aspect. And the website has a fact sheet emphasizing the *harms* of abortion denial while, again, not mentioning at all the life satisfaction or mental/emotional health results of the study.
When I point out the overlooked findings of Turnaway, people fond of the study (or what they know of it) unironically link me to the website, summary, and fact sheet as evidence that I have misunderstood Turnaway.
It is good to live in a country where there is no serious abortion question. There are medical regulations about good treatment and special requirements for late term abortions and that is it. The state has no interest in getting involved in those decisions. It is not perfect, hence the discussion that does happen is about making it better.
No I see pragmatics. The special requirements are simply that 2, not 1, medical practioner is involved. The state does not challenge the decisions of the medical practioners and their patients. That is how the state shows its lack of interest in getting involved.
Yes. There are blanket bans on abortions in several states and strict limits in others. Only a few leave it to a medical practice process. Legislators agitate about the question. There are regular reports of cases where doctors refuse to act as they think best due to legal risks.
The US is in a constant debate about whether abortions should happen. Australia and most of Europe is not.
My first post might more precisely have read “The State has no further interest in those decisions”.
The findings of the Turnaway Study should have no political implications whatsoever.
In the same way, a study showing that alcohol is harmful to you and your family should not, in itself, carry political implications either.
The role of public policy is not to shepherd individuals so as to prevent them from harming themselves. That is a very—very—slippery slope. And one I would never have expected to see Bryan Caplan anywhere near. Is he really aging that badly?”
“The role of public policy is not to shepherd individuals so as to prevent them from harming themselves.”
Lol.
I likely mostly share the normative values you espouse with this statement.
But it is obviously a false statement in terms of a positive description of reality. The nanny state is alive and ever deepening in all modern democracies.
Because the average voter is somewhere between fine with this and actively wants it.
Whether you and I (and Bryan) believe it to be a bad thing or not.
Yes, it is a normative position—one I used to think I shared with Bryan Caplan.
It genuinely saddens me to realize that this no longer seems to be the case (though I am more than willing to leave open the possibility that I have misinterpreted his post
The problem with that reading, though, is that it renders the post largely irrelevant. It becomes genuinely interesting only if what worries me is, in fact, the intended corollary of the entire post
Interesting that you noticed that, but not "the U.S. rate of death per live birth is 17 per 100,000 (.17%)".
17 per 100,000 is .017%, which Foster clearly understood from her immediate description of it as a hundredfold difference from 1%. Her typo or Bryan's?
I don’t understand Bryan’s interest in this study. He seems to be nitpicking. For example:
“ The key point, however, is that the self-reported measures of mental well-being ought to capture all of these moderate downsides. Foster’s finding is not that women denied an abortion have the same long-run overall life satisfaction as other women with the same financial and health problems. Her finding is that women denied abortion have the same long-run overall life satisfaction as otherwise similar women who got abortions and therefore avoided those financial and health problems. Upshot: The subjective gains of unplanned parenthood offset the objective problems of unplanned parenthood.”
How people feel is important, but so fundamentally subjective as to be of limited comparative value. There are studies of people experiencing severe trauma like the loss of a limb, spouse, or child. They seem to find that most people bounce back and are about as happy as they were before the loss. It would be foolish to conclude that the losses don’t matter because overall happiness in the subjects isn’t much different in the long run.
In the quote Bryan seems to say that while the women denied abortions are measurably poorer, that doesn’t really matter because they are about as happy as women who got abortions.
I mean, I presume Foster thinks women should have a fundamental right to bodily autonomy on purely philosophical grounds and therefore isn't going to base her ultimate policy proposals on a hypothetical sliding scale of misery. Why would she? If you think some practice is a positive social good for a wide range of reasons, then of course you'll always support it, but there's still nothing odd about highlighting what harms prohibitions do cause.
“Beyond the financial burden, taking away women’s agency to determine when and with whom they have children fundamentally changes their life trajectory”
This framing really grates on me. If we take the premise that choosing to have sex with someone is not enough to give the kind of agency she’s talking about, how does it never occur to people who frame the abortion debate on these terms that this is precisely the reality that men face in whatever abortion policy regime society chooses? I hate to sound like a men’s rights activist, but I also spent a fair bit of my hornier years acutely aware that once I had sex with someone, I had absolutely zero control over whether I was going to become a father, child support payments and all. Keep in mind, I wouldn’t advocate giving men the kind of “reproductive freedom” that abortion activists say is fundamental—I think that would unduly interfere with women’s bodily autonomy. But I also think there should be some way for a man to say, during the period when a woman does have a legal right to get an abortion, that the financial decision is hers alone.
Because abortion right is about medical decision regarding their body. It makes sense that women are often the one who exercise this right because they are the one carrying the child.
What’s your point? That’s exactly why I said I think concerns of bodily autonomy trump the idea of “reproductive freedom” as described in the quote at the top of my comment. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that nobody thinks “agency to determine when and with whom to have children” in order to prevent adverse “changes [in] their life trajectory” doesn’t seem to carry any weight when it comes to men. My point is that nobody thinks all people should be given that level of control over their reproduction.
Except men do have agency over their reproduction. Men can choose who to ejaculate into it.
I mean, that is not an equivalence. In this abortion access world, women get to have sex without risk of being forced to parent, and men do not. I personally think that's moral, but it is not balanced.
Of course it is. Men can choose who to ejaculate in. Women cannot choose when an egg is released or fertilized.
Is it possible there is a selection bias in the women who were rejected vs allowed abortions? Rather than being random, could the women who were rejected be generally less informed/educated, given that they were potentially unaware of the cutoff? Vs the women who received the abortion may have been debating what to do up to the deadline but ended up coming in before it was too late?
yes, there are tons of biases in this study. The "denied abortion" group was yonger, more likely to come from enviorments of abuse or neglect, etc etc. Also, about half were lost to follow up....etc etc
Ok, thanks. Still an interesting study and result.
Foster is kind of a paradox. She seemed to design Turnaway to be objective, but like a fish in water, she can't see how her own views cause her to frame the results in such a biased way.
ANSIRH definitely downplays these Turnaway findings, though. They have a website about the Turnaway Study that fails to mention the mental health outcomes of the women who were turned away (https://www.ansirh.org/research/ongoing/turnaway-study). The website includes a summary of Turnaway Publications that also somehow doesn't mention this aspect. And the website has a fact sheet emphasizing the *harms* of abortion denial while, again, not mentioning at all the life satisfaction or mental/emotional health results of the study.
When I point out the overlooked findings of Turnaway, people fond of the study (or what they know of it) unironically link me to the website, summary, and fact sheet as evidence that I have misunderstood Turnaway.
Abortion denial result in worse outcome.
Imagine that all women felt terrible after an abortion, and regretted it the rest of their lives.
That would mean abortion is immoral. But, even in this imaginary situation, abortion must be legal.
If adults are not free to make mistakes, all rights are at risk.
It is good to live in a country where there is no serious abortion question. There are medical regulations about good treatment and special requirements for late term abortions and that is it. The state has no interest in getting involved in those decisions. It is not perfect, hence the discussion that does happen is about making it better.
>special requirements for late term abortions and that is it. The state has no interest in getting involved in those decisions
Do you see the contradiction there?
No I see pragmatics. The special requirements are simply that 2, not 1, medical practioner is involved. The state does not challenge the decisions of the medical practioners and their patients. That is how the state shows its lack of interest in getting involved.
Do you think American legislators are intervening in individual abortion decisions?
Yes. There are blanket bans on abortions in several states and strict limits in others. Only a few leave it to a medical practice process. Legislators agitate about the question. There are regular reports of cases where doctors refuse to act as they think best due to legal risks.
The US is in a constant debate about whether abortions should happen. Australia and most of Europe is not.
My first post might more precisely have read “The State has no further interest in those decisions”.
“Why should donors pay all that money unless magnitudes matter?”
I loved this piece until the last sentence.
Said donors are happy to give all that money as a) virtue signaling, and b) academic “credibility” for their ideological views.
Bryan knows all about virtue signaling, as his other works make quite clear. Why does he “suddenly” ignore that here?
The findings of the Turnaway Study should have no political implications whatsoever.
In the same way, a study showing that alcohol is harmful to you and your family should not, in itself, carry political implications either.
The role of public policy is not to shepherd individuals so as to prevent them from harming themselves. That is a very—very—slippery slope. And one I would never have expected to see Bryan Caplan anywhere near. Is he really aging that badly?”
“The role of public policy is not to shepherd individuals so as to prevent them from harming themselves.”
Lol.
I likely mostly share the normative values you espouse with this statement.
But it is obviously a false statement in terms of a positive description of reality. The nanny state is alive and ever deepening in all modern democracies.
Because the average voter is somewhere between fine with this and actively wants it.
Whether you and I (and Bryan) believe it to be a bad thing or not.
Yes, it is a normative position—one I used to think I shared with Bryan Caplan.
It genuinely saddens me to realize that this no longer seems to be the case (though I am more than willing to leave open the possibility that I have misinterpreted his post
I saw nothing in this piece that suggests. Ryan does not agree with your normative position.
The most he said was that the academic study might have been worthwhile, even though the author’s use of and description of it are not.
Yes, that could be.
The problem with that reading, though, is that it renders the post largely irrelevant. It becomes genuinely interesting only if what worries me is, in fact, the intended corollary of the entire post
The alternative—that he does, in fact, believe in the nanny state when it happens to advance his own positions—deeply worries me.
"Preventing women from access abortion "
Did the book REALLY say that? Did the author not like prepositions, like "to"?
Or did Bryan Caplan quote INACCURATELY?
Interesting that you noticed that, but not "the U.S. rate of death per live birth is 17 per 100,000 (.17%)".
17 per 100,000 is .017%, which Foster clearly understood from her immediate description of it as a hundredfold difference from 1%. Her typo or Bryan's?
It did not say that. see comment in previous post regarding study's actual conclusion