A few weeks ago I had a post up, Down syndrome and abortion rates. Today I noticed a variable in the GSS, GENEABRT, which gives responses to the following question:
1567. Suppose a test shows the baby has a serious genetic defect. Would you (yourself want to/ want your partner to) have an abortion if a test shows the baby has a serious genetic defect?
I decided to check the responses for different demographics of course. The table are below the fold, but there seems to be a trend with people with more education, less religion and more liberalism being more prone to being inclined to abort a "defective" fetus. Note though that the responses don't exhibit a disjoint distribution; many in each demographic category express the alternative views. I was surprised to note that there wasn't a stronger trend on WORDSUM, but I think attitudes are a probably a function of social milieu and not some "rational " calculation. Please note again, there is basically no sex difference on the attitudes toward this topic. One interesting thing I've noticed about the abortion issue is that both the abortion rights and anti-abortion rights sides try and make this into a gender battle.1 But though I've seen a little difference in intensity, I haven't seen any abortion related question where men and women differ significantly (the only caveat is there is sometimes a bit of difference when you limit to graduate degree holders, as women in this category tend to be stronger supporters of abortion rights; so the "gender battle" narrative might just draw from the fact that the chattering classes are elites and they're the only ones who count to themselves).
1 - Those of you who are on the abortion rights side might be well versed in the argument that anti-abortion rights males are attempting to control the bodies of women, etc. But I recently heard Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission make the claim that the biggest supporters of abortion are men, who wish to engage in consequence free sex. Either of these arguments may be true, and intuitively there's certainly plausibility from where you stand, but the survey data don't show a big difference in attitudes toward abortion in the general population.
Razib: I don't think this is a very good question and I think you'd see much different results if the question were more specific about the severity of the defect.
For example, polydactyly (more than the normal number of fingers) would be a defect, yet I don't think many people would consider it cause for an abortion. The same could be said for many genetic diseases. If on the other hand, a fetus were diagnosed with a severe developmental disability that would require round the clock care, I think you'd see a very different set of answers.
Good point Sandra. It may also depend on when during the pregnancy the defect in question is detectable/detected.
I agree with the previous poster on the severity of the defect being crucial to the decision, as well a number of other factors. Many diagnosis in a fetus can be threatening to a mother's health as well, as in the case of placental abnormalities due to Trisomies; or the real risk of of delivering a chid with severe hydrocephaly.
An anencephalitic fetus, for example, presents another problem in that the baby will never survive outside the womb, and the emotional hardship of carrying a pregnancy to term under these conditions with the financial loss due to lost work time at the end of the pregnancy and after is a serious consideration if you will only lose the baby in the long run.
You leave out a major point: These results reflect what people say they would do. What they do, however, is different. Statistics show that about 90% of women faced with the diagnosis of a fetus with Down Syndrome will end up aborting the pregnancy. A great portion of these women claimed that they "would not abort" before they actually received a diagnosis.
Until this happens, a person does not know what he or she will decide. This makes the whole idea of a poll on the subject somewhat skewed. People's perception of their own beliefs are often not reflective of their actual choices.
Very intersting data, Razib.
I'm guessing there must be some element of self deception going on here as well -- in that it looks like under 50% of people say they would get an abortion in these circumstances, and yet data on several "serious genetic defects" such as Down Syndrom shows abortion in up to 90% of the pre-natally diagnosed cases. It would be interesting to see if the distribution of actual action is similar to that of stated instention.
Do you know anything about global attitudes towards abortion?
I'm Indian, and one thing that has struck me is that it is very very rare to find pro-life Indians.
For example, an FOB Indian lady I know has a daughter with some sort of severe non standard congential defect. "Had I known when I was pregnant, I would have had an abortion," this lady once said matter-of-factly to my mother.
Is this sort of attitude more common among South Asians, third worlders, etc?
For example, polydactyly (more than the normal number of fingers) would be a defect, yet I don't think many people would consider it cause for an abortion. The same could be said for many genetic diseases. If on the other hand, a fetus were diagnosed with a severe developmental disability that would require round the clock care, I think you'd see a very different set of answers.
i actually don't care too much about the % who say "yes" or "no" as i do about the rank order/trends between the different categories.
Yeah, it's not false that people don't always do what they say, but it's hard to say, a priori, in what way and how much this affects the results. Consider that some who have some reservations about abortion might say that in principle it makes sense to terminate the pregnancy (say, to save a greater amount of suffering), but find themselves unable to go through with the procedure.
As for the 90% figure, the subset of pregnant mothers who decides to get a karyotype is anything but representative with respect to this question.
My roommate's girlfriend is a pro-life Pakistani Muslim, but anecdotes are kind of a poor way to gather data points, though they create strong subjective impressions.
Some interesting negative results here. I was convinced by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's argument in Mother Nature that infanticide is probably the spontaneous way that humans control reproduction in hunter gatherer conditions - and that it is specifically the women who do this, from a concern with the quality of offspring. Fathers, by contrast, usually want kids raised if they are confident of paternity - even if this threatens the food supply of existing children. If abortion is psychologically similar to infanticide one would have expected that it would be more popular among women and men- but this isn't reflected here.
Check out sites for people who have terminated for birth defects, to get an idea - a "representative idea" - about beliefs vs actual actions on the subject. An example is the "Termination for Medical Reasons Board" at babycenter Online, the URL is obvious. The number of posts where the poster says "I was one of those who said they would never have an abortion" are many.
Another excellent resource is the "A Heartbreaking Choice" Website; however the (Yuku) forums are private. A carefully placed question or poll on the Open Forums there might be of interest.
Escuerd: I should have made clear I was referring to Hindu Indians. That your Pakistani friend is pro-life doesn't surprise me.
Do Muslims tend to be pro-life?
Hindus strike me as completely comfortable with abortion.
I think it's worth making a distinction on the moral framing. That a foetus is defective (nevermind the severity) implies that abortion could be used to avoid otherwise unavoidable (or not fully avoidable) suffering. If the question is framed with avoidability manipulated as in: "would you be willing to forgo an abortion to care for an ill child?" or "would you rather a child suffer than an abortion occur?" it becomes obviously biasing. But it is possible that respondents to this question will have intuitions primed by the word "defective" implying that interventions other than abortion cannot help. Of course which intuitions are primed is part of the point so this is not to say that the question is unrevealing. How do the other predictive factors influence these?
I guess I'm pretty far over towards the ready to abort extreme in the views I'd take to this question -- and I'm not even Jewish. :) Of course in the real world my mate's views would be huge even in what I'd advocate not to mention what would actually happen. I'd only want to press where I thought there'd be a chance of success.
Even for me though there are considerations beyond uselessly bruising my wife's feelings. What are our ages, particularly hers at the point of decision? More generally, how easy will it be for her to become pregnant again, how much time will that take, and how sure are we?
If she's in her early twenties and all systems are go I'd probably want to abort if there were signs of anything sub optimal whatsoever -- like not really high IQ, not to mention signs of below average. Similarly any physical defect at all. If one could get an amniocenthis bead on good looks, I'd want to factor that in too.
Now make her 40 and it's the last thin edge of possibilty that she'll be successfully pregnant, and my calculus would change a lot. Well myself I'd still vastly rather abort a downs fetus and go with adoption instead, but an extra finger starts looking a lot like a plastic surgery bill, and so on.
Re. infanticide in hunter gatherers
Wouldn't reproduction in hunter-gatherer societies be dependent on, and limited by, the supply of hunted game animals? When they suffered a population crash, as they frequently do for a variety of reasons, the hunter gatherers would too.
If so Hunter-gatherer mothers with many children would usually be the envy of their peers.
as:
I have no idea whether that's typical of South Asian Muslims and what isn't in that regard.
By the way, does anyone else imagine the title of this post sung to the tune of "What shall we do with a drunken sailor?"
According to the Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: 69% of Hindus think abortion ought to be legal in all or most cases whereas 48% of Muslims do (source, page 148). And 89% of Hindus think that one of the government's roles ought to be protecting morality vs. 88% of Muslims, so the view on abortion is likely to match their views on what is right rather than what should be legal or illegal (page 154).