@angelobottone@qoto.org
I teach #philosophy and work as a researcher for the Iona Institute (www.ionainstitute.ie) Abruzzese. #Distributism
Joined Jul 2019
An Ireland without Down Syndrome https://familysolidarity.org/an-ireland-without-down-syndrome/
CW long post, original content
An Ireland without Down Syndrome
The Master of the Rotunda, Professor Fergal Malone, has revealed that up to 95pc of parents who are informed by the hospital that their unborn babies have Down Syndrome (DS) opt for abortion. This is a horrifying figure that appears to have soared since the abortion referendum even though the terminations in these instances are performed mostly in England.
What is happening is, of course, a modern-day version of eugenics. We are creating an Ireland without Down Syndrome and it is provoking almost no debate or reaction.
Professor Malone mentioned the figure of 95pc to the Irish Independent last week, but in the run-up to the 2018 referendum, he told RTE’s Liveline that the figure was 56pc. This is a massive increase in a short period.
Rather than being shocked at what is happening, pro-choice activists want the abortion law changed so that unborn babies with non-fatal abnormalities can be aborted for that reason specifically.
These figures refer to the Rotunda, one of the biggest maternity hospitals in the country, where Malone is the Master, but there are no reasons to suppose rates being substantially different in other hospitals. We don’t know for sure if a similar percentage of parents from other maternity hospitals abort these babies, but it would not be at all surprising if it was also very high. The latest figure for England is 88pc.
In 2018, Dr Rhona Mahony, who was then Master of the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street, was asked whether there would be an increase in abortions of babies with Down Syndrome if the 8th amendment was repealed. She didn’t give a clear answer, but she said that in her hospital at the time about half of the women told their unborn baby had DS opted to go to England for a termination.
When, during the campaign to save the 8th amendment, the pro-life side highlighted the fact that in countries with liberal abortion laws a very high percentage of babies with DS are aborted, we were accused of using these children for political purposes.
Prominent pro-repeal advocates were in denial.
Simon Harris, who was then the Minister for Health, said: “I do not believe women in this country adopt that approach when they have a diagnosis of a child with a disability. … I think it is somewhat offensive to suggest women in Ireland are seeking abortions for that reason.”
Irish Times columnist, Fintan O’Toole, wrote: “It is not true that the increase in screening has wiped out the births of DS children. … Admittedly access to screening in Ireland is problematic, but even so the numbers of Irish women taking this option is strikingly small.”
He was wrong then, as I explained in this blog, and even more nowadays, as the figures from prof. Malone prove.
What has increased since the referendum is not only the percentage of DS diagnoses ending in terminations but obviously their absolute number as well. This is driven in part by the fact that it has become easier to detect chromosomal or genetic anomalies through earlier prenatal testing.
In the UK, the number of babies born with Down Syndrome has fallen by 30pc in NHS hospitals that have introduced early screening.
Prenatal tests are becoming more common and affordable. Their number in Holles Street maternity hospital went from 1,005 in 2012 to 2,515 in 2021.
Irish women still go to England when they want to abort a baby with a non-fatal abnormality, unless it detected before 12 weeks, when abortions can take place for any reason.
We don’t have absolute figures of abortions for non-fatal disabilities in Ireland, but Irish women generally go abroad because this kind of termination is permitted here only before the 12-week limit and most of diagnoses of foetal abnormality happen afterwards.
In 2021, 59 Irish babies with Down Syndrome were aborted in England, 24 more than the year before (35). This number continues to grow, as predicted by the prolife activists who were accused of scaremongering. The figures were 27 in 2019 and 17 in 2018.
Would Down Syndrome Ireland and other similar organisations have anything to say?
The current law in Ireland allows abortions at any gestational age when the baby has a condition that could cause its death within 28 days from birth, or earlier. Before 12 weeks, abortion is allowed for any reason.
Dr Aoife Mullally, who leads the HSE’s abortion services, wants a relaxation of the law and allow abortion for not life-threatening disabilities after 12 weeks. This is eugenics for disabled babies. It is not clear if she would accept any time limits.
Prof. Malone supports such relaxation but acknowledges that this can only happen by legislating for abortion on grounds of disability. He believes that if this was proposed before the 2018 referendum, as per the recommendation of the Citizens’ Assembly, the vote in favour of repeal would not have been so high.
Liberals will always ask for more relaxations. For them, abortion for disabilities is not a taboo anymore. They might not like the word, but this is pure eugenics, the selection of the fittest.
Talk on the Synod in Ireland https://familysolidarity.org/talk-on-the-synod-in-ireland/
The coming ‘depopulation bomb’ https://familysolidarity.org/the-coming-depopulation-bomb/
CW Long post. (Original content)
The coming ‘depopulation bomb’
A moral transformation, rather than social policies, will stop the de-population bomb claims Dr Nicholas Eberstadt, an expert in demography, in a new interview called the ‘De-Population Bomb’.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNdnlrkx-wg)
For years we have been warned of the dangers of an increasing world population (the so-called ‘population bomb’), but what happens when it shrinks, instead? This is already happening in many Western countries, he points out. Ireland has a fast-ageing population. Only large-scale immigration will stop it shrinking in the years ahead.
The United States, for example, was at replacement level (2.1 children per couple) or slightly above up to 2008. This means that there were sufficient births to compensate deaths, without taking into consideration immigration. Since then, the number of births per woman has gone down, particularly during the Covid pandemic. Ireland fertility rate is now about 1.7.
“If current trends continue, the United States would be on a track to shrink 20 percent for each generation”, warns Eberstadt, who a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of several studies on demography.
The European Union, Russia and China are experiencing the same demographic decline. So is all of East Asia, lead by Japan.
In Ireland, as Budget 2023 was being unveiled last week, the Department of Finance said that to maintain the current levels of public service we need an additional €8 billion in public expenditure each year by 2030.
“An ageing population will involve significant fiscal costs simply to ‘stand-still’”, said a risk assessment document.
In simple words, we need more young people working for the rest, particularly for those who have retired. Ideally, the size of the younger generations should exceed older ones but our demographic trends are going in the opposite direction.
Dr Eberstadt claims that the US federal spending is becoming untenable. “Today’s consumption for seniors is being financed by the unborn”.
One solution is more immigration, he says, but, even without considering the morality of depriving poorer countries of their workforce, this population policy does not always succeed in its intended purposes. He comments on the European experience: “The work rates are lower for the foreign-born than for the native-born in most European countries, the educational qualifications of working-age Europeans are typically lower for the foreign-born, and “non-EU foreign-born” youth are far more likely to be neither employed nor in education or training. The EU’s assimilation problem also looks to be intergenerational: throughout Europe, children of non-EU immigrants are generally more likely than their parents — not less likely — to see themselves as victims of group discrimination.”
In other words, large sections of the immigrant populations of parts of Europe are experiencing alienation, which often drives crime rates, and then voter backlash, as we have seen recently in Sweden.
Assimilation works better in the United States, Eberstadt claims, but immigration cannot be the only population policy to maintain demographic sustainability.
Dr Eberstadt is sceptical about subsidies and tax relief for families. He claims that “incentives to boost birth rates are likely to be costly and to elicit only modest and perhaps fleeting demographic results”.
Referring to the Scandinavian experience, where birth rates are mostly high relative to the European average (but still below replacement level), he talks about the “Swedish roller coaster”, i.e. the birth rate goes up just after a new subsidy is introduced, but then it goes back further below where it was before. What has to be changed instead, he maintains, is the people’s desire about the size of their families. This has been previously pointed out in this Iona Institute blog: https://ionainstitute.ie/only-a-social-revolution-can-reverse-falling-birth-rates/
The best indicator for fertility rates is how many children women want, but this does not depend on economic conditions. Richer people do not have more children. The most affluent and productive society that humanity has ever seen has also the lowest fertility rates.
“Children are not convenient. We have moved into a world in which convenience is prized and in which constraints on personal autonomy are increasingly viewed as onerous”.
What is needed instead is a change in values. The desire for larger families depends on the appreciation of family values.
Dr Eberstadt believes that an ageing and declining population will experience the opposite: pessimism, hesitance, dependence, self-indulgence, resentment, and division.
We can change the head count with immigration, but it will work only temporarily if immigrants embrace the same mentality that causes depopulation, he says. We need instead a moral transformation so that people are confident and brave enough to maintain a natural rate of replacement for society.
CW Long post. Original content.
How Covid curbs on church-going harmed public health
During the Covid-19 pandemic, people were barred in many countries from attending religious worship for long periods, and nowhere more so than in Ireland. When they were not barred, severe restrictions were put on the numbers who could attend. But strictly from a public health perspective, was it worth it? An important new study (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292122001672) suggest it was not, and the restrictions may have done more public health harm than good.
The research, just published in the European Economic Review is based on a nationally representative sample of over 100,000 responses from 52,459 individuals in the United States. It was carried out during the period from March 2020 to May 2021, when most American States limited the number who could attend a house of worship.
A crucial finding of the study is that the severe restrictions on religious worship do not seem to have slowed the spread of the virus.
It says: “there is no statistically or economically significant association between restrictions on houses of worship and either COVID-19 infections or deaths regardless of how restrictions are measured”. (p. 12)
The article concludes that “there is almost no evidence that the restrictions had a positive effect on public health, consistent with a growing body of evidence that has evaluated the launch of State quarantine policies.” (p. 12)
But the restrictions or ban on public worship did harm the mental health of some worshippers.
The author focuses on two variables: current life satisfaction and self-isolation.
The study confirmed that religious people have higher level of current life satisfaction overall, compared to the rest of the population. This is partly achieved by being part of a religious community. Therefore, it is no surprise that is also found a “strong negative association between state restrictions and current life satisfaction, particularly for religious adherents.” (p. 6).
If one of the main sources of their wellbeing was removed, how could it be otherwise?
The author notes that going to a church, or attending any other religious venue, offers people the opportunity to forge relationships and grow stronger in their faith. The survey established that the restrictions had “a disproportionate impact on self-isolation among religious adherents.” (p. 7)
Self-isolation among religious people increased by more than among their non-religious counterparts. This is one of the reasons why their well-being suffered more as a result of the pandemic.
The decline in well-being was stronger in Catholic than in Protestant congregations, and non-existent among Mormons, who are concentrated in Utah where no significant restrictions were put into place.
The main result of the study is that “religious adherents experienced systematically lower levels of well-being and isolation following the adoption of such restrictions.” (p. 11)
The study focuses on the United States only. It would be interesting to see such research extended to other countries, particularly to Ireland that had the longest period of worship restrictions in Europe.
Throwback on FAFCE conference on the protection of children from online pornography https://familysolidarity.org/972-2/
Religious practice makes us happy
Religious practice makes us happy, says Laurie Santos who teaches classes on the psychology of happiness at Yale University.
In an interview with the New York Times magazine, the popular cognitive scientist discusses what contributes to our happiness and, among other factors, she mentions religion.
She reckons that practising religious makes people happy. “There’s a lot of evidence that religious people are happier in a sense of life satisfaction and positive emotion in the moment”, she says.
But Santos also claims that religious people are happier not so much because of their beliefs but because of their actions. Being religiously active means to engage in social connection, to volunteer, to feel belonging to a community, to develop a sense of meaningful life together with those with kindred principles.
We get benefits not from theological principles but from the commitment to our group, she says.
This claim rebukes two common opinions among the critics of organised religion. Not only it contradicts the allegation that religion is repressive and detrimental, but it also confirms that it is organised religion - and not just spirituality – that makes us happy. Belief is not sufficient. In order to be beneficial, religious practice has to happen in some organised form, within a group.
“You need a cultural apparatus around the behaviour change”, she tells in the interview. This apparatus has two elements: theological principles and commitment to the group but the latter “doesn’t have to come with a set of spiritual beliefs”, she claims.
In another interview she explains that religious traditions induce us to do acts of charity, having gratitude, being in communities where we connect with others. All those actions give us a boost, but nonbelievers can get a boost from those habits, too.
Her position is problematic, nonetheless, for two reasons.
Firstly, it seems she suggests that all beliefs are equal and what matters most is the cultural apparatus around them. “Could someone get as much benefit from actively participating in a white-nationalist militia as he could be actively participating in a Quaker church?", asks the journalist.
In her reply, prof. Santos explains that she won’t advocate for such organisations, but she reckons that they give a sense of meaning and belonging to those who are involved in them.
Moreover, her claim that the benefits of religion can come from some substitutes is not convincing. Being involved in communal activities - from playing sport to engage in active politics- gives purpose and sense of belonging but I doubt it can be as meaningful as knowing that God is our Father and we are loved by him. They don't bring happiness, unless we understand happiness in a very narrow sense, as some kind of temporary pleasant experience.
People give up their lives more often for their religious faith than for their golf team or stamps club. Not all communal activities are equally valuable.
In any case, it is good to have one of the main gurus of the “science of happiness” confirming international studies which have shown that the level of happiness cross-correlates with the level of religiosity.
The contribution of religion to mental health and wellbeing is well established, and some surveys suggest that Christians are the happiest among the faith groups.
But one could say that the primary purpose of religion is not happiness in this life but to make us closer to God. It has positive effects, but these are not the best motivation for practising a faith.
Religion can be dangerous; it might involve persecution.
Still, those who suffer because of their faith do not abandon it, because they believe it is true even when it doesn’t make them happy.
It is good to pursue happiness, but it doesn’t lead us to God. Seek God, instead, and you will find happiness.
New genetic selection techniques will facilitate eugenics
The genetic selection of human embryos is reaching new levels of sophistication and depravity with the development of a technique called ‘polygenic screening’, based on statistical scores. Eugenics, which is breeding out the ‘defective’, is deepening its grip on our societies.
The new method is a step above current screening processes that can detect conditions like Down Syndrome.
Last year, the embryo of baby girl Aurea was chosen over other embryos who had more chance of developing certain medical conditions in the future, using a “polygenic risk score”.
The screening of human embryos artificially created in laboratory through IVF is quite common.
Tests are offered for genetic or chromosomal abnormalities, such as Down Syndrome, and only the unaffected embryos are implanted in the womb, while the other are destroyed.
When similar screening tests are performed during pregnancies, they generally lead to abortion.
This is a clear form of human selection on the basis of health characteristics, also known as eugenics.
So far, those tests were focusing on diseases caused by a single gene, but some conditions are triggered by the interaction of many genes.
A new technique based on “polygenic risk scores” (PRS), which has been employed for the first time with success, tests the presence of many genes.
In simple words, the new test analyses the gene-sequency of an individual and estimates the probability that some conditions will develop later in life.
As the link between some genes and certain medical conditions is only probabilistic, these new techniques are based on statistical data and they have only become possible in very recent years with the development of large databases of genetic information.
As it develops, preimplantation genetic testing is likely to be able to predict not only health, but also other characteristics related to our genes, such as intelligence, psychological traits, personality types, learning disabilities, height, etc.
Commissioning couples, but also single individuals, will be able to pick any physical or psychological trait linked to genetic and to ‘order’ their ideal child. In a society where choice is everything, who will stop them?
This is one further step down an extremely unethical path that aims at eliminating imperfect human beings. It is immoral not only because it destroys humans at embryonic stage, but also because it perpetuates the false assumption that some lives are not worth living when they have certain unwanted characteristics.
The defenders of these techniques are quite honest about the eugenicist nature of genetic selection.
Oxford university philosopher Julian Savulescu proposes a “welfarist model” of polygenic scores that select for traits associated with well-being.
He writes: “[Tests] to select against genetic conditions … such as Down Syndrome, are common and are even publicly funded, implying not only assent, but active support for allowing prospective parents to select against these conditions. Selection on the basis of polygenetic scores, if it is well correlated and causally linked to a welfare threshold with important bearing on the future’s child well-being is ethically equivalent to these. Indeed, allowing selection on the basis of only some genetic conditions may be discriminatory. It would be consistent with an anti-eugenic stance to reject all form of selection.”
Savulescu has no problem with eugenics, as long as “there is no broad social goal or coercion employed”.
Do we really need to wait until it becomes imposed by the state before we realise how immoral eugenic?
Do Christian ethics say we have a moral duty to take a Covid vaccine?
Maria Steen leads a discussion about whether or not we have a moral duty to take one of the Covid vaccines.
New podcast: ‘Why Leading Doctors Oppose Assisted Suicide’ by Angelo Bottone on #SoundCloud #np
https://soundcloud.com/user-965111391/why-leading-doctors-oppose-assisted-suicide-with-clips
New podcast: ‘Growing Support Among Doctors For Infanticide’ by Angelo Bottone on #SoundCloud #np https://soundcloud.com/user-965111391/growing-support #euthanasia
CW long post (original content)
More restrictive laws contribute to reduce the incidence of abortion.
A new study found that 70% of unintended pregnancies end in abortion in countries where it is broadly legal, while in countries where abortion is restricted, this happens only in 50% of the cases.
A new multi-authored study ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X20303156 ) published by The Lancet medical journal investigated the occurrence of abortion in unintended pregnancies world-wide. By unintended they mean pregnancies that occurred sooner than desired or were not wanted.
The researchers developed a new statistical model that jointly estimates unintended pregnancies and abortion.
It should be highlighted that four of the eight authors of the article are from the Guttmacher Institute, historically associated to the US abortion provider Planned Parenthood. Funding was provided by pro-choice organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Nonetheless, the study proves what pro-life groups has always claimed: more restrictive laws contribute to reduce the incidence of abortion.
The study divides all the countries in the world in two categories: where abortion is restricted and where it is “broadly legal”. By restricted they mean that it is prohibited, permitted to save the life of the woman or to preserve physical and mental health. By broadly legal is intended where abortion is available on request or on broad socioeconomic grounds.
Interestingly, Ireland is listed among those countries where abortion is available on request while the United Kingdom is among those where it is permitted on socioeconomic grounds.
( https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S2214109X20303156-mmc1.pdf )
Two results are particularly significant: in the period 2015-19, in countries where abortion is broadly legal, the abortion rate per 1,000 women aged 15-49 was 40. The rate was 36 where abortion is restricted.
In the same period, 70% of unintended pregnancies ended in abortion in countries where it is broadly legal, while in countries where it is restricted, this happens only in 50% of the cases.
Those two results prove that where more restrictive laws are in place, both the abortion rate and the number of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion are lower, compared to countries with more liberal abortion regimes.
There is no simple cause and effect between legislation and those two rates, as they are determined by a complex number of factors (socioeconomic conditions, quality of the health system, culture, etc.), but the association is clear.
The study also divided countries into three groups, according to their income as calculated by the World Bank, and found that the annual unintended pregnancy rate is 34 per 1,000 women aged 15-39 in high-income countries, 66 in middle-income countries, and 93 in low-income countries. It is not a surprise that unintended pregnancies are inversely proportional to the country income. Nonetheless, both the abortion rate and the proportion of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion is higher in middle-income countries, than in low or high-income countries. In other words, even if in poor countries there are more unintended pregnancies, those pregnancies don’t end in abortion as much as in middle-income countries.
The limit of this world-wide studies is that they group dozens of countries that might have one element in common (abortion legislation, in this case) but too many other factors that cannot be taken into consideration.
In the study the authors make some claims that are contradicted by their own results. For instance, they say: “We found no evidence that abortion rates were lower where abortion was restricted”.
In saying this, they refer not to the figures that I have quoted above. Instead, they have to exclude India and China, so that abortion rate in countries where abortion is legal decreases from 40 per 1,000 women to 26 per 1,000 women.
But why should those countries be excluded? Because they “skew” the results and the authors of the study are not happy with that.
In a quite unreasonable explanation they say: “We found that China and India, which comprised 62% of women who were at reproductive age in countries where abortion was broadly legal, skewed the averages in countries was broadly legal. Averaging among all other countries where abortion is broadly legal, abortion rates were higher among countries where abortion was restricted.”
( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X20303156 )
That is quite astonishing. Of course, if you exclude 62% of the population, the results will be different but that is not a good reason to do it. Manipulating a sample to achieve a preferred result is not science.
Yes, even this new study from pro-choice researchers confirms that abortion rates are lower where abortion is more restricted, unless you want to ignore the two most populated countries in the world.
New video: The religious will inherit the Earth https://www.bitchute.com/video/Dr5CNPL0mSM3/
CW Long post (original content)
The purposes of medicine
Medicine has three main purposes: to prevent and cure diseases, and to take care of patients. It is not simply a science but also a practice inspired by ethical values. So, what is the difference with the other sciences? Take for instance mineralogy. It is the description of the chemical and physical properties of minerals. Medicine, instead, aims not simply at describing what a human body is but it is also based on the assumption that there is a natural order, which we call health, and the purpose of the medical practice is to keep or to restore this order. There is an intrinsic good (health) that we discover through science and we preserve and reestablish through practice.
For instance, anatomy and physiology tell us what is the proper function of the eyes, i.e. to see. This is not simply a description but it also contains a prescriptive element because the ideal eye is also the normative model that the doctor uses when she acts to keep the patient’s eyes healthy or to prevent their diseases.
This understanding of medicine doesn’t require a particular religious faith but it is nonetheless intrinsically ethical. It is inspired by a certain conception of the good (health) that we find in human nature through the correct use of reason. The principle of “do not harm”, which has guided health care since ancient times, has the form of an ethical imperative.
Not everything that happens (or might happen) in a hospital or a clinic is medicine, unless it aims at preventing and curing diseases, and also at the same time at taking care of patients. Not all interventions that alter our bodies surgically or chemically are medicine, even if a scientist (medical expert) might be involved. Getting your facial features surgically changed to look more like your music idol is not medicine. Killing the unborn because she was unplanned or is disabled is not medicine. Augmenting your muscles through drugs to win a weightlifting contest is not medicine. Removing a perfectly healthy organ to adjust your body to your perceived gender is not medicine. Facilitating suicide is not medicine.
In all these examples a certain level of scientific knowledge is necessary but they lack what makes medicine more than a science: the ethical value of health. They might involve someone who has a proper knowledge of the human body but his purpose, in these examples, is not to restore or preserve the good of the functioning body. They are instances of scientific techniques without good and true medical ethics.
There is a growing pressure by certain ideologies to transform medicine, which is necessarily led by an objective good that we call health, into the satisfying of the subjective requests and choices of the patient. If bodily autonomy (my body, my choice), rather than health, is the ultimate value then there is no reason why doctor should not amputate a healthy arm or leg, when requested, or administer a dangerous substance, for recreation or self-harm or death. Without the guiding principle of health, practitioners become simply the executors of someone else’s desires. Obviously, people can do what they want with their bodies but this is not medicine.
There is no good medicine without ethics. Hospitals don’t need to be under church or religious influence but they cannot exist without an ethos, without values. When their core value is not health – an intrinsic good indicated by human nature- they don’t serve medicine anymore but trends, ideologies, business.
New video: Safety above all things is not a Christian virtue
https://www.bitchute.com/video/pjUCApgOD5wq/ #bitchute
How non-belief is factor in Irish voting behaviour https://ionainstitute.ie/how-non-belief-is-factor-in-irish-voting-behaviour/
CW long post
Getting the facts right about reversing effects of abortion pills
This week an article on the Irish Independent attacked Irish doctors who offer medical assistance to women who have taken abortion pills and then changed their minds before the effects were final. (1) The article contains a number of claims that need to be challenged.
A chemical abortion consists of two separate pills: the first, called mifepristone, blocks the effects of progesterone, which is the natural hormone in a pregnant mother’s body necessary for her pregnancy to thrive. The second pill, called misoprostol, is normally taken one to two days later and completes the abortion. (The author of the article, Ellen Coyne, incorrectly writes “The first is misoprostol and the second is mifepristone.”) (2)
The Abortion Pill Reversal protocol helps the women who have changed their mind within 72 hours of taking the first abortion pill and it aims at reversing the process and save their baby.
In some US states, doctors are legally required to tell about this possibility to women seeking abortions.
There is evidence that the attempts to reverse the effects of mifepristone (the first of the two pills) can be significantly successful and studies are undergoing to improve the efficacy of those protocols.
For instance, a study published in 2017 on the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care concludes: “Women have changed their mind after commencing medical abortion. Progesterone use in early pregnancy is low risk and its application to counter the effects of mifepristone in such circumstances may be clinically beneficial in preserving her threatened pregnancy. Further research is required, however, to provide definitive evidence.” (3)
There is no scientific evidence, instead, that those protocols are dangerous, even if Ellen Coyne’s article suggests so.
Let’s analyse the article and its faults. At the end of February (Ellen Coyne incorrectly says January), a group of Irish prolife doctors organised a conference on the “Abortion Pill Reversal”, with the participations of medical experts from the US. (4)
Ellen Coyne incorrectly uses the expression “abortion reversal” but obviously abortion cannot be reversed. The medical intervention aims at reversing the effect of the first pill (mifepristone) before it is too late. So, “abortion pill reversal”, or the more technical expression “mifepristone antagonization”, is the correct one.
Dr Fiona O Hanlon was contacted by a journalist of the Irish Independent and, on request, she offered to prescribe progestosterone to stop the effect of the first abortion pill. “It’s a similar mechanism that we are used to using for a threatened miscarriage so if you have changed your mind it is worth a try”, she told the journalist.
Ellen Coyne claims that there is no medical evidence that progesterone after the first pill can reverse a termination. The 2017 article that I have mentioned earlier disproves this claim. (More evidence can be found here). (4)
Coyne reports that the Dr O Hanlon, when challenged, referred to a 2018 study which suggested progesterone could be used to treat a threatened miscarriage. Coyne comments “More recent research has contradicted this study, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has said using progestins for threatened miscarriages is “controversial, and conclusive evidence supporting their use is lacking”.”
It is impossible to assess the unspecified research Coyne refers to but her quote from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists refers to a 2011 study, so it can’t be used to disprove something published in 2018. Coyne also omits the next paragraph from the same document, which says that progesterone could beneficial to those who had three miscarriages. (5)
On this same topic, in January this year the UK Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists announced “Progesterone could prevent 8,450 miscarriages a year, finds new research.” (6) (Remember, an abortion is effectively a deliberate miscarriage).
“Giving progesterone to women with early pregnancy bleeding and a history of miscarriage could lead to 8,450 more babies being born each year, finds new research published today.
Two new studies evidence both the scientific and economic advantages of giving a course of self-administered twice daily progesterone pessaries to women from when they first present with early pregnancy bleeding up until 16 weeks of pregnancy to prevent miscarriage. … Researchers are calling for progesterone to be offered as standard in the NHS for women with early pregnancy bleeding and a history of miscarriage, after their growing body of research has found it is both cost-effective and can increase women’s chances of having a baby.”
Perhaps Ellen Coyne should rewrite her article to take the above research into account?
Her article continues by mentioning a study about the efficacy of progesterone in stopping the effect of the first abortion pill. (7)
“Dr Mitchell Creinin, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at UC Davis, told the Irish Independent that the study had to be abandoned amid safety concerns. A number of women who had taken mifepristone but not followed it with misoprostol were admitted to hospital after they started to bleed.”, she writes.
The suggestion is that the use of progesterone is dangerous and this is why the study had to be interrupted. Quite the opposite. The study involved only 12 women, two of which left before the end. They were divided in two groups, one used progesterone and the other a placebo.
Of the three who were hospitalized, two were from the placebo group while the third had completed her abortion in spite of the progesterone.
The study had to be suspended not because progesterone is dangerous but because those in the placebo group were at risk.
The April 2020 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, published The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, contains some interesting comments to the study. (8)
“The authors’ limited data show that giving progesterone after mifepristone is safe. The significant safety concerns were in the placebo arm only. Moreover, regarding the efficacy of progesterone, the limited data showed that progesterone was effective in preserving embryonic life. Four of the 5 (80%) patients who received progesterone had continued gestational cardiac activity.”, wrote Dr Michael T. Valley.
“Although too small for statistical significance, these data are consistent with previous findings of a 68% live birth rate after treatment with the same dosing for oral progesterone and 25% for embryos exposed to mifepristone only. More research is warranted assessing all outcomes of progesterone after mifepristone.”, wrote Dr George Delgado, Dr Mary Davenport, and Dr Matthew Harrison.
From the dates of the articles mentioned, it should be noted that this is an ongoing discussion in the scientific community. More studies are necessary and, contrary to what Coyne’s article says, there are good reasons to claim that this method could save lives.
Some women are conflicted about their abortion and change their minds between the first and the second pill. Some even change their mind when the two pills fail to achieve a termination, and they decide to keep the baby rather than going for a surgical procedure. (9)
Those who are pro-choice should welcome the possibility to give women one last chance.
Notes:
(1) and (2) https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/anti-abortion-doctors-work-with-controversial-us-activists-to-promote-unproven-reversals-39233972.html
(3)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29260618/
(4)
https://www.irishdoctorsforlife.com/abortion-pill-reversal-conference/
(7)
https://doi.org/10.1097/aog.0000000000003620
(8)
https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/toc/2020/04000
(9)
https://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824(19)30169-6/pdf
I teach #philosophy and work as a researcher for the Iona Institute (www.ionainstitute.ie) Abruzzese. #Distributism
Joined Jul 2019
