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Bits and Pieces

Jill

On average, each African woman will experience seven unsafe abortions in her lifetime. In Nigeria alone, where abortion is illegal except to save the pregnant woman’s life, there are 760,000 abortions annually. Unsafe abortion is one reason why Nigeria has such a high maternal mortality rate, with 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births. For every woman who dies, 20 others are permanently maimed.

Sinead O’Connor on the Catholic Church abuse scandal.

Prom night and discrimination against gay and lesbian students. I’ll say it again: God bless the ACLU.

It’s not about race… unless I say it is. From Nate Silver: “Color me a bit confused. Did the same person who once wrote a book entitled The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma also just write an editorial entitled Note to Liberal Elite: It’s Not About Race?”

The Doggie Gaga Project. Thanks to Zuzu for the link.

The fine foreign company of international executions. The United States is in the company of some of the most backward “justice” systems in the world by allowing the death penalty.

Beth Ditto!

Carly Fiorina suggests we all “break bread” at Passover. Aww.

Beer was invented by women.

Lilith Fair — a women-centric music festival — is considering giving donations to anti-choice, misleading and dangerous Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

6 thoughts on Bits and Pieces

  1. Beer: The Argument in the article is that women were responsible for making beer in a lot of civilisations. Therefore they invented beer.
    Women were responsible for washing clothes in a lot of civilisations too. Therefore they invented the washing machine.

  2. Christian, if you apply “Women were responsible for washing clothes in a lot of civilisations too. Therefore they invented the washing machine.” back to the beer statement, it’s “Women were responsible for making beer in a lot of civilisations. Therefore they invented breweries.”

  3. I feel like it’s shoddy journalism to just link to a facebook page when making the assertion that Lilith Fair is considering donating to Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

    If this is true, I feel like you should link to a better source.

    However, not to keep this a solely negative post, there are far more many instances of good blogging on this site. 🙂

  4. I was impressed by O’Connor’s piece. She didn’t gloat or indulge in any “told you so”s. But she did point out something important: It’s not just a problem of “the Irish church,” and it’ll take a lot more than calls for “healing” and “forgiveness” to rectify the situation.

  5. The headline says that an average African woman will experience seven unsafe abortions in her lifetime. I am not trying to dispute the seriousness of the situation or the point of the story, but this estimate seems very high. The source is a quote from a gynecologist in the story, but I cannot see how she arrived at this number:

    There are 760,000 unsafe abortions annually in Nigeria, according to the story, and there are about 32 million women in Nigeria between aged 15-40 (http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ni-nigeria/Age-_distribution).

    This means that there were about 760,000/32,000,000 = 0.024 abortions per woman per year in this age bracket in 2010. So assuming a relatively long reproductive lifetime of 35 years, the average number of abortions per woman over her lifetime is 35*0.024 = 0.84 (Still disturbingly high, especially in a country where abortion is so unsafe).

    Conclusion: a high estimate gives less than one abortion per woman over her reproductive lifetime. Granted that there are African countries with higher rates than Nigeria, but still, are they high enough to give an overall average of 7 as opposed to 0.84?

    Perhaps I have made a mistake in calculation, or perhaps “experience” does not necessarily mean undergoing the procedure (witnessing or being otherwise involved maybe?), but I’m not sure it’s responsible to quote such a shocking figure when a more accurate estimate still shows such a terrible picture.

  6. ACLU: Since I don’t believe in God, I donate annually. Every time I see them in the news, I am glad I do!

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