In light of the prominence of abortion regulation issues in Judge Alito's nomination, it is somewhat of an coincidence to see this important new paper by Jonathan Klick, "Mandatory Waiting Periods for Abortions and Female Mental Health."
Here's the abstract:
Proponents of laws requiring a waiting period before a woman can receive an abortion argue that these cooling off periods protect against rash decisions on the part of women in the event of unplanned pregnancies. Opponents claim, at best, waiting periods have no effect on decision-making and, at worst, they subject women to additional mental anguish and stress. In this article, I examine these competing claims using adult female suicide rates at the state level as a proxy for mental health. Panel data analyses suggest that the adoption of mandatory waiting periods reduce suicide rates by about 10 percent, and this effect is statistically significant. The result is robust to various attempts to control for unobservable heterogeneity and simultaneity.
evisceratedemolish all women's freedoms for all of time, his dissent stops considerably short of what most people are saying.The Casey dissent embodies above all else a careful analysis and exposition of scrutiny levels (the Court has had problems coming to a majority on this point also, Fundamental right, quasi-fundamental, or imaginary right?). Clearly the dissent reveals a Circuit Court author who is following stare decisis and other neato latin words as well.
Alito may or may not be eternal enemy of Roe. But I would be greatly edified if I hear further constructive discussion of the judgment that Alito actually articulated if we are going to once again delve into the depths of society's feelings about abortion.
A woman has a right to choose an abortion.
A woman has a right to commit suicide.
Therefore, a woman has a right to commit suicide over having exercised her right to have an abortion, and a waiting period justified by reducing suicides interferes with both these rights.
The research design here is only very remotely connected to what it purports to show. The entire difference might be entirely unrelated to women having abortions. You can find all sorts of spurious correlations. The study does reference a Finnish study that seems somewhat better.
/would hate to be waiting for handgun and an abortion in the same week.
//didn't read the article.
Ah, Joe Socher beat me to it. On three judge panels, we call two-judge dissents 'majority opinions.'
Still, point taken. Couldn't resist, that's all.
I do have an issue with making a raped woman wait though. If said woman wants the pregnancy terminated, I see no reason to make her carry yet one more reminder of her attack for even another day. I'm no shrink, but I do know a bit about rape victims and I can't imagine making her continue the pregnancy in that case if the woman does not wish to do so could possibly be good for her mental health.
But now we know what plays the Court will be calling + Alito. Brown, Lawrence, and Roe will most assuredly be over-powered with the Nebraska-style offense. Coming at 'ya.
The waiting period doesn't reduce suicides because it forcibly prevents the women from committing suicide or makes it physically difficult to obtain the tools. Presumably, it prevents suicide by giving them less of a *motivation* to commit suicide (i.e. reduce anguish that leads to suicide).
That isn't an interference with rights at all. It's like pointing out that people crippled in car accidents might commit suicide, and then claiming that reducing the number of car accidents is unlibertarian because it interferes with suicide.
For the affluent, or urban dwellers, you're probably right.
But, tell that to a woman who lives 6 hours away from the nearest clinic, doesn't have a car, and can't take time off of work without getting fired. The point is to put as many barriers up as possible. i.e. if you can't outlaw it, regulate it to death.
I don't think the libertarian argument would hinge on the fact that government has no buisness preventing suicide. Rather the main point would be they have no buisness interfering with abortions to prevent suicide. That is they have no right to tell a woman to wait.
Ooh ooh, or we could base our legislation on the machinations found in the hit movie Saw II. "Obviously if my head is in an Iron Maiden, it's a violation of basic civil liberties to deny me the right to dig the key out of another man's occular cavity with a spoon. Think about the children."
How 'bout a ten day waiting period for posts like mine?
Hate to get medieval on you like this. But concurring opinions nonetheless at their essence are dissents. See The Dissenting opinion. Antonin Scalia. Journal of Supreme Court History 33, 34 (1994). So indeed, lone dissent does have meaning. Although I almost retreated earlier, being in doubt myself. But we can put the whole thing to rest now.
That admission being made, a glance at this paper suggests it's ... flimsy. Suicide as a proxy for mental health is easy to use, but it is not really a good proxy. (I would rather see suicide compared against, e.g., hospitalization rates, or even prescriptions of psychiatric drugs.)
In this paper it is justified more or less by the author's bald assertion that it's a good proxy for mental health.
I also notice that the author "controls for" a bunch of pointless crap. ("Number of psychiatrists" -- huh? Most people who have mental health needs get therapy from MFTs and psychologists and drugs from GPs. Psychiatrists don't figure into it as much as you might think.)
If he assumes that waiting periods for abortion have an effect on suicide rates (as opposed to actually measuring mental health somehow), he needs to control for NOT HAVING HAD ABORTIONS. This does not seem to have been done.
And don't get me started about confounding variables.
Actually, come to think of it, there seems to have been no actual research performed -- just a review of records. Pretty thin stuff, if you ask me. Poring over documents may answer for historians and lawyers, but not so much for actual questions relating to mental health that are intended to have an effect on policy. This won't do at all.
Finally, it is always a little weird to see a scholar in one field (law) make a foray into research in another area (mental health). I like cross-pollination, but this sort of thing reminds me of Joseph Campbell, the English scholar, magically becoming an authority on World Religion, which he was not, and it showed.
FWIW, I am nearly finished with a Master's in Psychology. These are my thoughts; YMMV.
1. it doesn't include any data at all on girls and women aged younger than 25, among whom i imagine suicide rates are generally higher than those among older women
2. it includes lots of data on those who are very likely infertile or typically not getting pregnant even though they are fertile. suppose you assume a uniform age distribution. then only about 1/4 of the population reflected by Klick's sample is likely at real statistical risk of pregnancy, and thus abortion. so his dependent variable involves 1/4 signal and 3/4 noise.
now you might say that the second point only makes the paper's result more impressive, since he finds a strong result where one would expect mush given all the noise. and that raises a further problem: if you scale his estimated impacts by 4 to reflect the fact that only 1/4 of the population is likely at risk, you get the result that among those who can be affected, suicide rates decline by about 40% as a result of waiting periods.
and then you have to ask yourself why the apparent reduction
in suicide rates happens: is it because some women don't have abortions once they ponder (as, i assume, the laws' supporters are hoping)? or is it because (as Klick suggests in part) women who do have abortions are mentally more prepared for them given time to ponder?
given that most waiting periods are relatively short, and given that (i'm guessing) the waiting periods most likely are shorter than the time between the date a woman realizes she is pregnant and actually can get an abortion performed, i seriously doubt that the explanation for Klick's result is the latter suggestion above.
if it's the former -- fewer abortions, so fewer distraught women who later kill themselves -- then you have to ask yourself if the waiting periods have a large enough effect on abortion rates to have that big an effect on suicide rates. my understanding from talking to a friend who is an expert on the empirical literature on this topic is that the answer is probably no---even if you assume that every woman deterred from abortion by these laws would have killed herself, the effect would be too large. and she made that comment thinking the effect was 10%, not 40% as i'm arguing Klick's results actually suggest.
i can think of other potential issues here, as well as some approaches to assessing whether Klick's results are spurious, but this post is already quite long....
Also one must wonder, to the extent that women lived in parts of states with waiting periods which closely adjoined metropolitan ares in states without waiting periods, how thre study controlled for those who could afford it simply crossing the border?
All in all, while it was even less statistically supportable than this one, I liked the academic study of the relationship betwen the average income of male heads of households as depicted in fiction television shows and those of male heads of households in reality, compared over time, more than I like this one. What was it Twain said, I think, about getting a huge payoff in speculation from a miniscule investment of fact?
RFGS
1. Take one controversial subject (abortion)
2. Choose a large number of independent variables (16 in this case)
3. Run regression analysis until you get a significant result. (desired = p < 0.01)
4. Relax definition of significant result. With many variables, it's very unlikely that you won't get something in your filter. Under no circumstances relax past p < 0.10 . (waiting period = p < 0.06)
5. Write paper.
First, and this can never be said enough: "Correlation is not causation".
Second: How do you know that the suicides were a result of either having or not having an abortion?
Third: How do you measure accurately and without bias determine those lives saved from suicide because they did or did not have an abortion?
This isn't research. It's a conclusion looking for support. Mr. Zywicki really needs to stop using junk science to support his beliefs.