[RD] Abortion, once again

[Samson]

I was just reading a Washington Post article about various racial disparities in the city of Minneapolis. A former Minneapolis Public Schools official is quoted as saying, "We often call [Minnesota] Mississippi with snow." Ouch. Anyway, among other things, the article cited a report by Urban League Twin Cities which said that Black women in Minneapolis-St. Paul are "nearly three times as likely to die during or after* pregnancy than White mothers, 'regardless of education levels and socioeconomic status'." So it would seem to me that anything that further pressures women in Minneapolis to carry a child when they don't want one knowingly puts Black women at a higher risk of death than White women.


* I assume this means 'shortly after pregnancy'? During the recovery? I guess there are some longer-term or chronic health problems that can come from pregnancy. But what do I know? I haven't looked at the report, so I wonder if the paragraph or page from which this sentence was plucked makes it clearer.

I guess this is the report they are referring to, but I THINK that they have the reference wrong. It is referenced to this paper, and that does not have the words childbirth or maternal or from a skim have this data.

Spoiler The graphic in the PDF :

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@TheMeInTeam i mean if you think you can talk to the tides that's on you, but as far as i can tell, it's generally why your construction is just kinda bad in people's eyes. most of us don't think we can convince the moon to do stuff, we believe it's a rock

i get that. what's weird to me is that you don't understand that this demonstrates a major reasoning flaw in the innate racism claim for abortion.

if one's usage of statistics weights these explanations equally, that usage of statistics is insufficient or mistaken. nobody here disagrees that gravity and people/policy are different things. thus it's not helpful to use statistical interpretations that fail to differentiate between them.

if you create an "explanation" using statistics that equally implicates a senator and a celestial body...maybe it's worth reworking that explanation so that it does not explain the moon the same was as a person.

So it would seem to me that anything that further pressures women in Minneapolis to carry a child when they don't want one knowingly puts Black women at a higher risk of death than White women.

nope, that doesn't follow. the reasoning was already given in this thread (i also linked a report on it, for a different state but should still give insight). by far largest % of maternal deaths are from drug overdose or physical trauma...things like suicide, homicide and car crashes. we do not have a good reason to predict that abortion policy change will meaningfully alter homicide/vehicular accident deaths...suicides i'm not sure. i think the most common pregnancy-related cause of death was hemorrhage, with a few other complications being named as well. there is still disparity if you control for this, but it is smaller in both absolute and relative sense (and basically doesn't exist for any other racial group, not just white patients). perhaps hospitals across the country are just broadly uniformly racist to the tune of almost the same multiple of extra maternal deaths, but i find that unconvincing.

black women in particular (not women of color in general) have about 3x maternal death rate compared to average as a whole across the country. a small fraction of that is due to pregnancy complications. a large proportion of that is getting bludgeoned by tons of metal at high speeds or murdered. other than altering black american culture as a whole somehow (which isn't up to me), i don't have a good answer for this. but altering abortion policy won't move the needle much, and if you want to help pregnant mothers specifically you probably want legislation requiring training on recognizing stuff like hypertension, bleeding and preeclampsia in time to do something about them. that kind of approach will help prevent maternal deaths that are related to the actual pregnancy. you probably need something else to help prevent external factors from killing the mother directly.

 

[Angst]

i get that. what's weird to me is that you don't understand that this demonstrates a major reasoning flaw in the innate racism claim for abortion.

if one's usage of statistics weights these explanations equally, that usage of statistics is insufficient or mistaken. nobody here disagrees that gravity and people/policy are different things. thus it's not helpful to use statistical interpretations that fail to differentiate between them.

if you create an "explanation" using statistics that equally implicates a senator and a celestial body...maybe it's worth reworking that explanation so that it does not explain the moon the same was as a person.

the moon is not implicated as it is not an entity with agency that can be bargained with. a senator is implicated because they're able to do something else. the senator is not clueless and is responsive to and responsible of matters at hand they have chosen to do

 

[EgonSpengler]

nope, that doesn't follow. the reasoning was already given in this thread (i also linked a report on it, for a different state but should still give insight). by far largest % of maternal deaths are from drug overdose or physical trauma...things like suicide, homicide and car crashes. we do not have a good reason to predict that abortion policy change will meaningfully alter homicide/vehicular accident deaths...suicides i'm not sure. i think the most common pregnancy-related cause of death was hemorrhage, with a few other complications being named as well. there is still disparity if you control for this, but it is smaller in both absolute and relative sense (and basically doesn't exist for any other racial group, not just white patients). perhaps hospitals across the country are just broadly uniformly racist to the tune of almost the same multiple of extra maternal deaths, but i find that unconvincing.

black women in particular (not women of color in general) have about 3x maternal death rate compared to average as a whole across the country. a small fraction of that is due to pregnancy complications. a large proportion of that is getting bludgeoned by tons of metal at high speeds or murdered. other than altering black american culture as a whole somehow (which isn't up to me), i don't have a good answer for this. but altering abortion policy won't move the needle much, and if you want to help pregnant mothers specifically you probably want legislation requiring training on recognizing stuff like hypertension, bleeding and preeclampsia in time to do something about them. that kind of approach will help prevent maternal deaths that are related to the actual pregnancy. you probably need something else to help prevent external factors from killing the mother directly.

From the report @Samson linked, whether it's the same report the Post article was referencing or not: "Maternal mortality refers to the death of a woman during pregnancy or within one year of the end of pregnancy from a pregnancy complication. Maternal morbidity refers to the unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term consequences to a birthing woman’s health." It wouldn't make sense to include things that aren't a complication of the pregnancy.

A flyer published by the Minnesota Dept of Health mentioned in the footnotes of that report cites "preliminary" data, but it's unclear to me why. Anyway, they say "Approximately a third of the preliminary determined maternal deaths in Minnesota resulted from suicide, unintentional poisoning (drug-overdose), or violence." Then later they say, "Preliminary data from Minnesota Vital Records, 2011-2017, shows African American/black women are 1.5 times more likely and American Indian mothers are 7.8 times more likely to die during pregnancy, delivery, or the year post-delivery than non-Hispanic white women. When breaking down the African American/black population further the data shows U.S. born African American/black women are 2.8 times more likely to die during pregnancy, delivery, or the year post-delivery than non-Hispanic white women." Hunh? Those two sentences look almost the same, but with the word "preliminary" and different numbers.

First, it's "1.5 times" and then it's "2.8 times." So which is it? That's pretty confusing. Near as I can figure, their "preliminary" data - the "1.5 times more likely" - is all deaths of women who are pregnant or who recently gave birth, while the second sentence - the "2.8 times more likely" - is just the pregnancy complications. That's the only way I can parse those two, seemingly-contradictory sentences. I don't know why they'd include car crashes and the like at all, but that's the only way it makes sense to me.

So unless Black women in Minnesota are just 1.5x (or 2.8x) more likely to die than White women at all times - and if that were the case, why is this stat in a report about complications of pregnancy? - then the increased mortality rate is somehow connected to pregnancy. If being pregnant makes Black women more likely to die in a car accident than White women (which doesn't make any sense) you would have to consider that a consequence of being pregnant, and any policy or legislation that made more women carry a pregnancy they don't want would have to take it into account. Unintended or unexplained consequences are still consequences, and lawmakers have to be responsible for any consequences of their policies that can be anticipated (and you might be able to make a case that lawmakers also have to take responsibility for consequences of their actions that they didn't anticipate).


EDIT: I feel I should add, this issue of race in the topic of abortion is kind of a side-story that doesn't change anything for me. That the hardcore pro-life position seems to be racist - or just indifferent to racial disparities in health outcomes - isn't by itself a huge reason I'm pro-choice. If I'm misinterpreting any of these reports or articles or data, and anti-abortion legislation isn't racist, it won't change my position an inch. If I'm right, and it is racist, it's just some pee on a [stink] sandwich.

 

[MaryKB]

I almost died during my first delivery back in 2021. The doctor had to perform emergency surgery to save my life, otherwise I would've bled out on the bed. I'm a white woman and they did everything in their power to make sure I didn't die.

Perhaps if I were black, they wouldn't have been so motivated. Perhaps if I were black, they wouldn't have cared as much and I wouldn't have gotten the same standard of care that I did receive. We can hypothesize this because many black women have died when they were in situations like mine. This is an example both of my white privilege (always receiving the best of care) as well as systemic racism (life not being valued the same)

But reality and facts disrupt TMIT's worldview, and scientific studies have shown that you can't change someone's way of thinking with facts, it just causes them to entrench deeper. Some people just don't have a sense of empathy.

 

[Birdjaguar]

One should always keep in mind that people do not act rationally on a daily basis. Rational thinking does have a place but as soon as one thinks it should be or is commonplace, you have missed the target.

 

[EgonSpengler]

[...]studies have shown that you can't change someone's way of thinking with facts, it just causes them to entrench deeper.

Indeed. People tend to see things that support the positions we already have, and dismiss things that don't. It's not always conscious or deliberate. I read somewhere years ago that people are more likely to remember things that support what we believe to be true, and are more likely to forget things that don't. Some time ago, someone did a survey of readers of the New York Times to see if they read corrections and retractions of the previous day's articles. Some did, many did not. What was interesting was that they found some people read the retraction/correction and continued to believe the article as originally printed.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

the post you quoted specifically said that's what they can't compete with, though. if you don't disagree with that assessment, why did you quote it like that?

Your notion assumed I wanted wholly able-bodied players to play with disabled players and that isn't what I was talking about at all. Silly me, I assumed that all-disabled sports teams were a thing in the U.S. or that you'd at least have heard of the Invictus Games (for temporarily/permanently disabled military vets), but I guess that was an erroneous assumption.

small family owned business with some things for employees on 2nd story but most on first. that kind of setup should have a ramp outside, but not necessarily any accommodations beyond stairs to get to 2nd floor for example.

It depends on whether or not a disabled employee is expected to do anything on the 2nd floor.

typing "all" in caps twice in a row invites hyper-scrutiny in a way where saying that accommodations should be done in most/nearly all cases would not. i don't think it's reasonable to see "all" twice like that in context and assume she meant something else. even more so given her signature. i took the statement at face value.

It'd be great if you'd speak to me directly, not pretend as though I'm not here. I get enough of that in RL, as though my walkers/canes have also rendered me deaf and cognitively impaired.

Ramps are necessary for ALL who wish to enter a public building or office building or business. Period, end of story. To do otherwise is to deny access to ALL members of the public would ordinarily expect to be able to enter that building.

If you want to argue about my signature, feel free to drop a PM. It's off-topic here.

Never assume you know what I think or feel or believe

Your words conveyed the idea that disabled athletes don't deserve to be accommodated by even being allowed inside a building. I rebutted your notion. I'm prepared to hear you attempt to convince me that you really don't think the bigoted-sounding things you typed here.

 

[EgonSpengler]

One should always keep in mind that people do not act rationally on a daily basis. Rational thinking does a place but as soon as one thinks it should be or is commonplace, you have missed the target.

I agree, although I hold lawmakers, judges, and some others to a higher standard, at least in their professional roles. It's why we expect people in some positions to recuse themselves if a family member is involved. A surgeon shouldn't operate on her son who's been in a car crash unless she's literally the only surgeon in the county.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Your notion assumed I wanted wholly able-bodied players to play with disabled players and that isn't what I was talking about at all.

my "notion" was based on the fact that you quoted something specific of mine and responded to it. or at least, that's what it looked like you were doing at the time.

It depends on whether or not a disabled employee is expected to do anything on the 2nd floor.

true, but here's where rubber meets road. building an elevator or other means to do this is expensive relative to just using stairs, and thus the employer might make the ability to use the stairs part of the job requirement. the government then needs to draw a line between what are reasonable cost tradeoffs vs what is unfair discrimination. as long as you draw that line somewhere short of "literally always accommodate without exception" or "never accommodate" (neither of which are functional), there's going to be arguments over where that line should be and why.

It'd be great if you'd speak to me directly, not pretend as though I'm not here. I get enough of that in RL, as though my walkers/canes have also rendered me deaf and cognitively impaired.

i did though. my response was to someone who criticized the way i responded to you, which was at face value. i find it interesting that you're only quoting me here though, when i'm not the one who started that line of conversation and only defended my reasoning for what i put.

Your words conveyed the idea that disabled athletes don't deserve to be accommodated by even being allowed inside a building.

actually, they didn't. i won't play a game where you act like i made an argument different from what is actually on the screen. if you don't want to address what i said, then don't. please don't make something up though.

One should always keep in mind that people do not act rationally on a daily basis. Rational thinking does have a place but as soon as one thinks it should be or is commonplace, you have missed the target.

nobody is perfect, and mistakes are common to being human. however, to abandon rational thinking once presented, when its usage is mandatory to optimizing policy and minimizing harm...that is to double down on and deliberately continue a mistake after knowing it as such. doing that in the context of implementing policy is malice.

i don't hold people to the standard where their every waking moment has to be comprised of nothing but actions taken based on optimizing their personal utility function or something. i do, however, hold policy to the standard that we must strive to make it rational...and correct it when we have identified that it is not.

moon logic on a forum is weird. moon logic when writing actual abortion law policy is malice. moon logic gets us abortion laws like we see in texas and louisiana just as surely as it allows us to somehow consider reasoning that applies the same way to tidal forces and abortion policy to be sound. moon logic is bad.

we should at least *try* to be rational in setting policy.

From the report @Samson linked, whether it's the same report the Post article was referencing or not: "Maternal mortality refers to the death of a woman during pregnancy or within one year of the end of pregnancy from a pregnancy complication. Maternal morbidity refers to the unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term consequences to a birthing woman’s health." It wouldn't make sense to include things that aren't a complication of the pregnancy.

i thought so too, but when i looked at the report on la maternal deaths it seems this stat often includes deaths not directly related to pregnancies (though that state also has a hard time even identifying whether pregnancy was relevant and gave an unsettling number of pregnancy-deaths to the statistic where pregnancy wasn't involved at all...makes it a little easier to see how care is so poor if their information control is in that state). still, when i observe the same ~3x maternal death rate for black americans between many states i don't think it's likely that in some they're all really pregnancy-related while in others they non-pregnancy related death tolls just happen to align and give the same numbers :/.

So unless Black women in Minnesota are just 1.5x (or 2.8x) more likely to die than White women at all times

doesn't look like 1.5x would be that far off:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db342-h.pdf

note that this includes both men and women, and men are significantly more likely to die in the 25-44 age group generally. just a quick thing for reference.

If being pregnant makes Black women more likely to die in a car accident than White women (which doesn't make any sense) you would have to consider that a consequence of being pregnant

no. not only would you not "have" to do that, it is a statistical reasoning failure to do so. that was the whole point of calling out the "innately racist abortion policy" claim a few pages ago now. being pregnant causing only black women specifically to die more often in vehicular accidents doesn't make sense, as you say. absent a mechanistic explanation we can test, we absolutely should *not* conclude that vehicular accidents racially target black women and only black women. "it doesn't make sense" is a good reason to start to look for those testable explanations, rather than accept as reality an association that doesn't make sense.

Unintended or unexplained consequences are still consequences, and lawmakers have to be responsible for any consequences of their policies that can be anticipated

unintended consequences can still hold responsibility, if sufficient negligence is involved.

unexplained ones can't. if you can't explain a causal link to the consequences, holding someone...anyone..."responsible" for those consequences is unjust. not just a little bit unjust, but the intellectual equivalent of throwing you in jail for the damage from a hurricane. or like convicting someone for murder when you aren't even sure how the person died. that explanation is really, really important. you can't skip it, or if you do any justification becomes arbitrary.

If I'm misinterpreting any of these reports or articles or data, and anti-abortion legislation isn't racist, it won't change my position an inch. If I'm right, and it is racist, it's just some pee on a [stink] sandwich.

abortion policy isn't racist unless you have a mechanistic explanation that is at least in principle testable, period.

note that yet again (3x or 4x now?), nobody has addressed the simple reality that changing one's stance on whether abortions are good or bad would also *necessarily* change your conclusions about to whom they are supposedly racist...assuming you have any basis for such a conclusion in the first place.

A surgeon shouldn't operate on her son who's been in a car crash unless she's literally the only surgeon in the county.

imo this is actually less bad than having a judge operate with spouse on prosecution or defense or similar. while there are other, very good reasons not to have family members operate on each other, i don't expect conflict of interest to be one of them.

What was interesting was that they found some people read the retraction/correction and continued to believe the article as originally printed.

yuck. that darkens my view on humanity a little more.

 

[Lexicus]

nobody is perfect, and mistakes are common to being human. however, to abandon rational thinking once presented, when its usage is mandatory to optimizing policy and minimizing harm...that is to double down on and deliberately continue a mistake after knowing it as such. doing that in the context of implementing policy is malice.

The same logic doesn't apply to racist outcomes because....reasons

 

[Birdjaguar]

Moderator Action: When you quote a post, it is pretty clear who you are talking to and there is little reason to re-address them personally in your post with a snide or disrespectful remark. If you are not quoting anyone and just adding to the conversation, please don't throw out casual attacks at other contributors to the thread. It is a heated topic, I know, but let's try not to name call or take drive by hits on others. Thanks.

 

[Remorseless1]

Parsing through one specific study that covers one metropolitan area in a huge country is a fun way to deflect. It produces BS, though.

The US's maternal death rates are appalling - several countries in Africa and South America have better rates. And like all things American, the worst outcomes involved women of color. Minority communities have been underserved historically in a variety of areas, including access to healthcare, quality education, affordable housing and employment. Snaking that many women of color were killed by violent non-white partners is a racist dog whistle and deserves contempt.

It also demonstrates that people who are against abortion are NOT pro-life. They care little if at all about other people or children, and tend to be big supporters of the death penalty.

It's all about keeping women in their place and owning the libs.

 

[Lexicus]

So, how many children shot dead today? Where are the same pro-life people to tell us about how gun control is an unacceptable restriction of their freedom?

 

[Farm Boy]

So, how many children shot dead today? Where are the same pro-life people to tell us about how gun control is an unacceptable restriction of their freedom?

The GOP has avowed that all the mass murderers in the US will be the best equipped mass murderers in the world.

Once you incorporate the topic I'm not supposed to discuss, the people you're calling put up with far greater horror, in some ways, every day. They're used to horror for principle. Sometimes yours, sometimes not, sometimes both, sometimes neither. The world is full of bad choices and the best things we can sort out to do with them.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

building an elevator or other means to do this is expensive relative to just using stairs, and thus the employer might make the ability to use the stairs part of the job requirement. the government then needs to draw a line between what are reasonable cost tradeoffs vs what is unfair discrimination. as long as you draw that line somewhere short of "literally always accommodate without exception" or "never accommodate" (neither of which are functional), there's going to be arguments over where that line should be and why.

"Expensive."

Yeah, there will usually be extra $$$$$ associated with making sure a building is disabled-accessible, so it's best to do it from the get-go, rather than find out later when the building is triumphantly opened to the public and then OOPS! It's discovered that there are segments of the public for whom it is either inaccessible or unsafe.

As for the rest... let me know when you're ready to engage without moving goalposts all over the place, and make an honest effort to understand what I'm saying. Disability isn't just a theoretical thing for me. I live with it every day.

 

[EgonSpengler]

nobody is perfect, and mistakes are common to being human. however, to abandon rational thinking once presented, when its usage is mandatory to optimizing policy and minimizing harm...that is to double down on and deliberately continue a mistake after knowing it as such. doing that in the context of implementing policy is malice.

i don't hold people to the standard where their every waking moment has to be comprised of nothing but actions taken based on optimizing their personal utility function or something. i do, however, hold policy to the standard that we must strive to make it rational...and correct it when we have identified that it is not.

You've written here a nice summation of why I think intention isn't super-important when looking at policies that have outcomes with racial disparities. (As for causation vs correlation, see below.)

unintended consequences can still hold responsibility, if sufficient negligence is involved.

unexplained ones can't. if you can't explain a causal link to the consequences, holding someone...anyone..."responsible" for those consequences is unjust. not just a little bit unjust, but the intellectual equivalent of throwing you in jail for the damage from a hurricane. or like convicting someone for murder when you aren't even sure how the person died. that explanation is really, really important. you can't skip it, or if you do any justification becomes arbitrary.

It's the pro-life side who want to throw people in jail and file lawsuits against people, not the pro-choice side. afaik.

Also, I'm thinking more about whether I agree that a causal link is strictly necessary to demand more sensible behavior, or if an as-yet-mysterious correlation is enough.

abortion policy isn't racist unless you have a mechanistic explanation that is at least in principle testable, period.

It depends what you mean by testable. You can't conduct an ethical experiment for a lot of policies, because you would have to deliberately expose a test group to a negative condition. If we required an experiment in this case, I would think that supports the pro-choice position, because the imposition here, the policy being proposed that will negatively impact people's lives, is coming from the pro-life side. The burden of evidence should be on the people who want to impose greater government intervention and restrictions of individual freedom. The pro-life side are the ones who should be presenting evidence of a mechanistic explanation, if we need one (they would decline my challenge simply by saying that we don't need one).

I'm not a libertarian, but I would think the libertarian position has to be pro-choice: Until and unless it's strongly demonstrated that government action is an overall improvement in people's lives and also the best or only solution, the government should (have to) back off. And the pro-life and pro-choice positions aren't starting out from a neutral position, like runners at a starting line. We're not working from a blank canvas here. We have a lot of evidence regarding abortion policy, and the balance of it strongly suggests that restricting this particular liberty is a negative on a lot of people.

So if there's something going on that seems to result in the proposed restrictions being even more onerous for Black and indigenous people, and if it's important to know exactly what it is that's causing that, I think the pro-life side should be the ones who have to sort that out for us before imposing their government oversight, restrictions, and demands on people's lives. I think it's enough to show a correlation to put a hand up and say, "whoa, pump the brakes, something's wrong here."

note that yet again (3x or 4x now?), nobody has addressed the simple reality that changing one's stance on whether abortions are good or bad would also *necessarily* change your conclusions about to whom they are supposedly racist...assuming you have any basis for such a conclusion in the first place.

Well, I don't know how many people think abortions are good. "Least-bad", maybe. Whether or not abortions are "good" isn't where the divide is. The question before us is who gets to decide: the individual, in the moment, taking all of the particulars of her situation into account; or the government, making sweeping decisions for everyone, in advance, and without much consideration for the nuances.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I think it's enough to show a correlation to put a hand up and say, "whoa, pump the brakes, something's wrong here."

After typing this, I was thinking that this sounds like a classic, conservative-with-a-small-c position. Conservatives ought to be the ones saying, "hang on, this is getting bumpy; we should slow down and figure this out before putting our foot on the gas."

Here's another conservative idea: Unfunded mandate

In the United States, federal mandates are orders that induce "responsibility, action, procedure or anything else that is imposed by constitutional, administrative, executive, or judicial action" for state and local governments and/or the private sector.

An unfunded mandate is a statute or regulation that requires a state or local government to perform certain actions, with no money provided for fulfilling the requirements. Public individuals or organizations can also be required to fulfill public mandates.

According to the US Dept. of Agriculture (don't ask me why it was the USDA that undertook this project, but whatever), the projected average cost of raising a child born in 2015 to the age of 17 in the US was $233,610. Adjust for inflation, and maybe aim for the low end of the average... Every pregnant woman who wants an abortion should get either (a) an abortion, or (b) $250,000. Ballpark. I used an online inflation calculator: $233,610 in 2015 is $281,268 in 2022, I just thought an even quarter-million sounded nicer. Some committee can figure out what the final number should be, and since we're talking state laws here, the cost of raising a child surely varies a lot by state. If a given state wants to force women to have children they don't want, they should just go ahead and cough up the money. And it might make more sense to amortize the costs rather than hand out a lump sum upon birth: It would be $16,500 to each woman in 2022, rising with inflation over the 17 years.

 

[EgonSpengler]

According to the US Dept. of Agriculture (don't ask me why it was the USDA that undertook this project, but whatever), the projected average cost of raising a child born in 2015 to the age of 17 in the US was $233,610. Adjust for inflation, and maybe aim for the low end of the average...

Some other interesting things in here. First, it kind of addresses something I posted earlier, about whether being forced to have a first child before they're ready impacts a woman's ability to have a second child later, for women who might want two.

in 2015, a family will spend approximately $12,980 annually per child in a middle-income ($59,200-$107,400), two-child, married-couple family.

Child-rearing expenses are subject to economies of scale. That is, with each additional child, expenses on each declines. For married-couple families with one child, expenses averaged 27% more per child than expenses in a two-child family.

So, indeed, that first child costs more than the second. Having a first child when you're not ready has a greater negative financial impact than having a second or third that you aren't ready for, not just because young parents might not be making much money yet, but in fact that first child is the most expensive.

Also,

*Projected inflationary costs are estimated to average 2.2 percent per year. This estimate is calculated by averaging the rate of inflation over the past 20 years.

So that's been blown right out of the water by subsequent events. These costs must now be an underestimate, maybe by a lot. And I wonder, for example, how many more women would be screwed by the shortage of baby formula if Roe v Wade had been overturned a year or three ago.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Letter to the Editor.

Unimaginable Losses, Indeed

Regarding “The Unimaginable Losses From Discarding Human Life” (Letters, May 20): What if the human being robbed of the opportunity to cure cancer isn’t a mass of dividing cells but a fully formed young woman whose brilliant plans are derailed by an unwanted, possibly wholly uninvited, pregnancy?

KELLY LANG

San Francisco