Reply #47: What flawed methodology!

[whoneedstickets]

I simply scanned the study and they appear to rely on a self-reporting subset of women? What if some concealed their abortion history? I'm not sure the R2L critics point about mental heath is valid, but what if self-reporting prior abortion was an indication of mental health? Following up with these women would reveal only that those with good mental health exhibited subsequent good mental health.

To really conduct such a study one would need a random sample of women who received abortions and compared it with a similarly sampled group of those who chose adoption. Anything else has issues of self-selection and sampling bias.

Edit:
After reading more these studies, they are rife with sampling issues, even the Scottish study only got 77 responses out of nearly 400 identified candidates. Any survey conducted with a sub 25% response rate is crap. The other studies deal entirely with relatively early procedures. One study notes a lack of follow-up with most clinic patients -- a serious data deficiency. Even the meta-analysis of 250 prior studies shows some incidence of post abortion anguish (likely with those already suffering some mental illness). No wonder most data is anectdotal!! C.E. Koop's point about the cost of a full study are probably accurate. If one tried to do the same with mothers who opted for adoption, the data and selection issues would be huge.

Frankly given these methodological problems, the mental anguish argument seems pretty much a dead end.