From: Chuck.Lavazzi@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Chuck Lavazzi)
Subject: Re: Dalton Brooks Gehtz
Organization: Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 17:11:44 GMT

In article <Bu9K9n.FCq.2@cs.cmu.edu> garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin) writes:
>In article <Bu8Kr6.LJ1@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> ata@sage.cc.purdue.edu (ata boy) writes:
>##In article <ata@sage.cc.purdue.edu> (ata boy) writes:
>###I have read Planned Parenthood's study which shows that 91% of all
>###women who have abortions suffer from Post Abortive Stress Syndrome.
>
>Have you really?  It appears from below that you have only
>read "New Dimensions"' out of context quote from the
>study.
>
>#Happy to oblige
>#
>#From the October, 1991 issue of a magazine called 
>#_New_Dimensions_:_The Psychology_ Behind_the_News_.  
>#On page 21 it reads:
>#
>#In a shocking admission, Planned Parenthood recently acknowldeged what the anti-abortion camp has been insisting for years: Nine out of ten women who have
>#"safe and legal" abortions suffer from abortion-induced traumas.  "A number of
>#anti-choice studies and surveys (including the Reardon/WIC Study and the Grant
>#Survey) have shown that the incidence of post-procedural trauma for abortion
>#clients may be as high as 91 percent of all cases," says Planned Parenthood.
>#"While recent unpublished reports from the Alan Guttmacher Institute [Planned
>#Parenthood's research division] indicate that the scope of the problem may have
>#been accurately tabulated in these studies, the effect of those same anti-
>#choice forces in creating the trauma in the first place has not yet been
>#effectively measured."  *  In other words: We admit that nine out of ten women
>#who have abortions are traumatized by the experience...but the pro-lifers
>#are to blame.
>#
>#
>#*Planned Parenthood's "Department of Education 3-Year Plan and Long Range
>#Program Goals, 1990-1993," page 29.
>
>
>I guess there is some hope for Holtsinger's cause, after all, since
>some people will evidentally believe anything.  
>
>If one reads the original study, one sees that the PP paper
>discusses that some studies funded by anti-abortion groups
>are not accurately tabulated.  The quote cited in the
>"New Dimensions" piece is referring to the fact that
>the numbers cited in Reardon's survery of WEBA members
>were apparently accurately tabulated.  This in no way
>implies that PP accepts these results as generalizable to
>the entire population of women who have had abortions.
>(Most thinking people realize that members of a group
>called Women Exploited by Abortion can never be called
>an unbiased sample.)  It merely says that Reardon didn't
>make tabulation errors.  
>
	Bingo.  It's another variation of the old "garbage in/garbage out"
scenario.  If your sample is biased in some systematic way, the data you
get from it will also be biased no matter how accurately they have been
collected and tabulated.  If the person who originally posted this wants
anyone outside of the usual circle of anti-abortion True Believers(tm) to
buy it, he's going to have to demonstrate that members of WEBA are
representative of all women who have abortions.  In this particualr case,
he'd have to present evidence that 90% of all women who have had abortions
(or a truly random sample therof) suffered from this syndrome.
	Alas for this attempt, former Surgeon General Koop looked at that
data a few years back and found no such trend.
>Susan

Chuck
No .sig, no frills, no foolin'


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