I expect there are going to be serious confounding factors, though, in terms of how stable the woman's life was beforehand.
Unplanned pregnancy is generally linked to high-risk behaviour; I'd really like to see how "aftermath" studies of abortion and adoption choosing women account for the fact that it's the women they would measure as at-risk for mental health issues beforehand who are getting into a situation where they need to make that choice.
I'm a bit troubled by the magic in the author's assumptions that a bundle of cells is nothing, but at birth it's giving up a real child. It doesn't seem much more based in sense than any other arbitrary marker of, "Now it's real." A small seedling is a real tree, even if it doesn't give shade yet, and my understanding is that for several months post-natal fetuses aren't big on reciprocity, either.
Of course, my perspective is that of a woman who wants a child very much and isn't at all sure it will be possible. This biases me in favour of the "what a waste of potential!" view towards discarding a healthily developing fetus.
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Re: Strange how peer-reviewed studies are near non-existent
Date: 2009-03-19 05:02 am (UTC)Unplanned pregnancy is generally linked to high-risk behaviour; I'd really like to see how "aftermath" studies of abortion and adoption choosing women account for the fact that it's the women they would measure as at-risk for mental health issues beforehand who are getting into a situation where they need to make that choice.
I'm a bit troubled by the magic in the author's assumptions that a bundle of cells is nothing, but at birth it's giving up a real child. It doesn't seem much more based in sense than any other arbitrary marker of, "Now it's real." A small seedling is a real tree, even if it doesn't give shade yet, and my understanding is that for several months post-natal fetuses aren't big on reciprocity, either.
Of course, my perspective is that of a woman who wants a child very much and isn't at all sure it will be possible. This biases me in favour of the "what a waste of potential!" view towards discarding a healthily developing fetus.