Study: Women Who Have Abortion Face 81% Increased Risk of Mental Health Problems

Some of the women concerned would not have been too good to start with, but not all.  Some would simply have been young and naive

An analysis of 22 studies on abortion and mental health showed that women who had an abortion faced an "81% increased risk of mental health problems" and that nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was "shown to be directly attributable to abortion," according to a report published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, and posted online in January of this year.

The report also found that women who carried their babies to term experienced a "protective effect," in that the suicide rate for mothers (per 100,000) was nearly 50% lower than that of women of reproductive age (per 100,000) who had not had children. Further, "several other studies conducted in different countries have revealed even lower rates of suicide following birth when compared with women in the general population," according to the report.

The report, "Abortion and Mental Health: Quantitative Synthesis and Analysis of Research Published 1995 - 2009," is written by Priscilla K. Coleman. She is the Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Coleman also is the co-author of Post-Abortion Trauma: Possible Psychological and Existential Aftermaths, published by the Pontifical Academy for Life at the Vatican.

In the report, Coleman examined 22 peer-reviewed studies -- 15 from the United States and seven from other countries.

In total, there were 877,181 participants in the studies, "of whom 163,831 had experienced an abortion," reported Coleman. The studies looked at abortion and its potential impact through 36 "measures of effect," which included "9 alcohol use/misuse, 5 marijuana, 7 anxiety, 11 depression, 4 suicidal behavior."

"Based on data extracted from 22 studies, the results of this meta-analytic review of the abortion and mental health literature indicate quite consistently that abortion is associated with moderate to highly increased risks of psychological problems subsequent to the procedure," reads the report.

"Overall, the results revealed that women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be directly attributable to abortion," said Coleman.

"The strongest effects were observed when women who had had an abortion were compared with women who had carried to term and when the outcomes measured related to aubstance use and suicidal behavior," wrote Coleman.

She also reported, "The finding that abortion is associated with significantly higher risks of mental health problems compared with carrying a pregnancy to term is consistent with literature demonstrating protective effects of pregnancy delivered relative to particular mental health outcomes. For example, with regard to suicide, Gissler et al reported the annual suicide rate for women of reproductive age to be 11.3 per 100,000, whereas the rate was only 5.9 per 100,000 in association with birth."

In conclusion, Colman said, "The composite results reported herein indicate that abortion is a statistically validated risk factor for the development of various psychological disorders."

SOURCE





Farage to FB's Zuckerberg: Conservatives 'Are Being Willfully Discriminated Against' by Facebook

While questioning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the European Parliament on May 22, UKIP founder and MEP Nigel Farage said that Facebook was instrumental in helping Brexit pass and Donald Trump get elected, but now had changed its algorithms to restrict conservative content.

Contrary to Zuckerberg's repeated claims, Facebook today is not a "platform for all ideas," said Farage, and "mainstream" conservatives "are being willfully discriminated against." He added that it may be time to establish a "social media bill of rights to basically protect free speech."

During his questioning, Farage, a Member of the European Parliament, said to Zuckerberg, "The one slight problem I have – I’m watching very carefully the testimony you gave on Capitol Hill. Time and again, people asked you, is this genuinely a neutral, political platform? And you come up with the same line again and again -- it’s well-crafted -- you say that Facebook is a platform for all ideas."

“Now historically, of course, it’s true, that through Facebook and other forms of social media there is no way that Brexit or Trump or the Italian elections could ever possibly have happened," said Farage, the founder of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP).  It was social media that allowed people to get round the back of mainstream media."

“Now, perhaps you’re horrified by this creation of yours and what it’s led to, I don’t know," said Farage. "But what is absolutely true is that since January of this year, you’ve changed your modus operandi, you’ve changed your algorithms, and it has led directly to a very substantial drop in views and engagements for those that have got right-of-center political opinions."

He continued, “The facts are very clear. Just look at President Trump’s numbers, which are at a much smaller scale. Look at mine. Look at thousands of other conservative commentators. On average, we’re down about 25% over the course of this year. And, you know, that’s happening on a 'platform for all ideas.'"

“I’m not talking here, Mr. Zuckerberg about extremism," said Farage.  "I’m not talking about encouraging violence. I’m not talking about hatred of anybody. I’m talking about people who have majority, mainstream opinions."

"Frankly, I feel they are being willfully discriminated against," he said.

“What interests me is who decides what is acceptable?" said Farage.  "Who are these people you referred to earlier, these third-party fact-checkers? Who are these people? Why is there no transparency in this process at all?"

"I’m not generally someone that calls for legislation on the international stage," he said, "but I’m beginning to wonder whether we need a social media bill of rights to basically protect free speech. … Would you accept that today Facebook is not a platform for all ideas that is operated impartially?"

On Twitter, May 22, Farage stated, "Stop telling us Facebook is a 'platform for all ideas.' The evidence shows your algorithms censor conservative opinions."

A new report by the Media Research Center, "Censored! How Online Media Companies Are Suppressing Conservative Speech", details numerous instances of deliberate censorship of conservative content on the major social media platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google.

Facebook and Twitter combined reach 1.8 billion people, and 68% of Americans use Facebook. The left-leaning Facebook and other social media platforms are dialing down and restricting, burying conservative information.

"War is being declared on the conservative movement in this space and conservatives are losing -- badly," states the MRC report. "If the right is silenced, billions of people will be cut off from conservative ideas and conservative media. It's the new battleground of media bias. It's a war against ideas. It's a clear effort to censor the conservative worldview from the public conversation."

SOURCE






Demo Identity Politics Chasing Whites Away



You may have heard that whites are becoming Republican because they feel at home venting their anti-immigrant sentiments in a party led by a president whose alleged dog whistles have called the racist hounds home.

But that nasty and simplistic explanation doesn’t quite cut it. Nor does it tell us why so many working-class whites who voted for Barack Obama jumped ship to support a businessman and television celebrity for president.

Democrats, who have long believed that tribalism and identity politics would rack up Electoral College votes, still fail to realize that promising a multicultural, gender-neutral society isn’t enough for millions of Americans who can’t find jobs, pay their bills or send their kids to college.

In 1992, Democrat campaign strategist James Carville famously told an inner-circle of Bill Clinton’s staff, “It’s the economy, stupid.” In doing so, he got the campaign to focus on a powerful issue that President George H. W. Bush was neglecting.

It seems like Democrats could use a little bit of that old-fashioned common sense in their campaigns these days, but they’re clearly not getting the message. Instead, the party is moving farther and farther to the left, seemingly unable or unwilling to recognize what’s driving Donald Trump’s support among white voters.

Jim Geraghty writes at National Review that years after Bill Clinton pledged to restore the American promise by focusing on economic issues, “The Hillary Clinton campaign reflected Democrats’ increasing obsession with identity politics, contending that the country’s most pressing injustices explicitly broke along the lines of gender, race, immigration status, and sexual identity.”

The numbers show a downward trajectory in white support of Democrats since the Clinton years, which happens to correlate with the decision by many Democrat candidates to abandon the white working class.

In 1996, Clinton won 49% of the white vote in a two-party race. In 2000, Al Gore attracted only 43%. After pulling a bit more whites into his camp in 2008, Barack Obama’s support from whites dropped to 39% in 2012. Hillary Clinton won about the same percentage in 2016. And if Hillary Clinton had matched Obama’s 2012 support among blacks, she still would have lost to Trump.

Identity politics is clearly backfiring on Democrats.

Vox provides more evidence that Democrats are abandoning non-educated whites at their own peril: “White non-college voters remain a larger group than white college voters in almost all states — and are far larger in the Rust Belt states that gave the Democrats so much trouble in 2016: Iowa is 62 percent white non-college versus 31 percent white college; Michigan is 54 percent white non-college versus 28 percent white college; Ohio splits 55 percent to 29 percent; Pennsylvania 51 percent to 31 percent; and Wisconsin 58 percent to 32 percent.”

Joshua Zingher of The Washington Post further explains the loss of white voter support in the Democrat Party to two factors. One is that more white, conservative Democrats have moved over to the Republican Party than white, liberal Republicans have become Democrats, and that Democrats have “courted and won more votes from ethnic and racial minority groups” while “at the same time, in response to these demographic changes, more whites have shifted rightward on economic issues.”

What white voters were looking for in 2016, and what drives their loyalty to President Trump through the sagas of Stormy Daniels and off-the-wall tweet storms is the hope that an outsider in the White House just might be able to offer them something that no other candidate has.

Deep down, many coal miners in West Virginia and unemployed steel workers in Pennsylvania probably know that the Rust Belt might never fully recover. But a president who at least offers them a vision of what’s possible is a lot more attractive than candidates offering gender-neutral bathrooms, unabashed globalism, and promises of green jobs as a cure-all for America’s economic woes.

And branding the white working class neo-Confederates isn’t a wise strategy.

Thomas B. Edsall suggested in The New York Times earlier this year that “a Democratic Party based on urban cosmopolitan business liberalism runs the risk not only of leading to the continued marginalization of the minority poor, but also — as the policies of the Trump administration demonstrate — to the continued neglect of the white working-class electorate that put Trump in the White House.”

Yet, many Democrats continue to believe the party can gain seats in Congress or take back the White House by appeasing every identity group except white working-class voters. They’re counting on the fact that the burgeoning electorate of women, Millennials, educated professionals and minorities will be enough to make up for the loss of whites. For now, their calculations have resulted in Republicans holding more power nationwide than at any point since the early 20th century.

The GOP shouldn’t rest on its laurels heading into the 2018 midterms, though. It’s newfound support in the working class is tentative at best, especially if the party doesn’t keep producing results. But until Democrats stop focusing on “white privilege” and start listening to white voters, the balance of power will continue to favor Republicans in the coming years.

Democrats hoping for a “blue wave” this fall must fight a rising tide of working-class Republicans. Sure, they can do this by practicing identity politics. But unless they start identifying with the hopes and dreams of the white working class, Nancy Pelosi can forget about taking the speaker’s gavel from House Republicans in November.

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Here’s What Happened After Liberal Activists Shut Down Catholic Adoption Providers in Illinois

For the past decade, left-wing activists have targeted faith-based adoption agencies if they do not assist same-sex couples who wish to adopt. Through lawsuits and legislation, these activists gave faith-based agencies an ultimatum: Comply with politically correct views on sexuality and marriage and place children with same-sex couples, or shut down.

Faced with this dilemma, Steve Roach, executive director of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, closed the foster care and adoption programs he ran in the state. The cost? In an interview with The Daily Signal, Roach estimates that 3,000 children were affected and thousands of  foster parents no longer will be part of the system.

Now, he advocates passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, federal legislation to prohibit discriminating or taking other adverse action against a child welfare service provider that declines to provide, facilitate, or refer for a service that conflicts with the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs. Learn more in the transcript of the interview, which was lightly edited for clarity.

Kelsey Harkness: Tell us what happened to your adoption and foster care program run through Catholic Charities, and how you found yourself in this situation.

Roach: In 2011, the state of Illinois passed a law which effectively ended up shutting down foster care and adoption programs for Catholic Charities and a couple of other faith-based organizations in Illinois.

We were definitely forced out of foster care and adoption. The law was called the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act. The language in that law required that all agencies providing this service must place children in the homes of same-sex couples.

My faith and our religion believes in the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, and we could not abide by that new state requirement. So after 50 years of providing quality foster care for children, for tens of thousands of children all across Illinois, the state said, “Well, if you do not surrender that religious belief, you will be eradicated.” And that’s what happened.

Harkness: But you do allow single mothers to adopt—can you explain why? I think some people look at that and don’t understand why you’re OK facilitating adoptions for single mothers versus facilitating adoptions for same-sex couples.

Roach: We believed that a child is raised best with a mother and a father. Married mother and father. We did provide homes with single parents as long as those parents were not cohabitating. Research shows that a lot of abuse happens in homes via the live-in paramour. So our policy was if you’re a single adult, and you qualify, we will work with you.

Harkness: What do you say to someone from the ACLU or from the other side that calls you “anti-gay?”

Roach: We just say that’s not the case. What we were was an organization that tried to provide quality foster homes for abused and neglected kids, and we did it very well. We were one of the best at it. I want to say, what’s the solution for these kids who are suffering? That’s what we need to be doing.

Harkness: Can same-sex parents still adopt children, whether faith-based agencies are a part of the system or not?

Roach: Absolutely. The [proposed] Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act does not prevent anyone from becoming a foster or adoptive parent. In Illinois, we know all same-sex couples can be served because without Catholic Charities, they all are being served.

So with Catholic Charities in the picture, it wouldn’t change that. This [proposed] law does not prevent anyone from the opportunity to become a foster and adoptive parent.

Harkness: What were the consequences of being shut down?

Roach: Thousands of children and foster parents were forced to leave Catholic Charities and go to other agencies. I think altogether there were about 3,000 children that were disrupted, and thousands more foster parents that were no longer allowed to work with Catholic Charities.

The consequences were something that we had predicted. We were one of the most effective organizations in the state of Illinois in recruiting quality foster parents. And now, one only has to look at the headlines and see that there is a shortage of quality foster homes, not only in Illinois but across the country.

That’s only been exacerbated now in the last few years by the opioid epidemic. And so at a time where foster parents were in desperate need, you have quality organizations with a long-standing history of being able to find them being forced to the sidelines.

Harkness: Why is Catholic Charities so good at recruiting foster parents compared to your average organization?

Roach: It has a lot to do with our long history. Not only had we been providing foster care and a partnership with the state of Illinois since the early ’70s, late ’60s, but for over 100 years Catholic Charities had been finding adoptive homes, working with various Catholic orphanages.

So we have this huge, long history. It is a mission, it’s something that we hold very near and dear to our hearts. Children need homes and that’s what the church has been involved with for a long, long time. And I think that’s why we’re really, really good at what we do.

Harkness: What happens if other faith-based adoption agencies get pushed out of the system?

Roach: I think the travesty is perpetuated. The crisis will be made worse. The children are the one who’ve suffered in all this. This was clearly an argument on rights. Our side believe this was a religious liberty argument, and we will always believe that. The other side believes that this was a civil rights argument, and so we had a conflict within the public-private partnership that had worked well since the Great Depression.

And instead of resolving the conflict by putting the kids first and coming up with a solution that would help those kids, all we did was shout at each other, and that’s all they’re doing right now. You discriminate, or you’re anti-gay, or you’re anti-God, and all we do is we argue and fight.

In the meantime, you have thousands of kids who are suffering. So if this continues to happen, the number of kids suffering will only grow. We have to be adults in the room; we can’t be shouting, we’ve got to help these kids. There is a solution. The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act provides that solution.

The solution should do two things. One, it should ensure that anyone who wants to do this difficult work, and it is very difficult work—it’s not a right, no one has a right to become a foster parent or adoptive [parent]—anyone who wants to do this work should allow religious organizations to abide by their religious faith in providing these services. The second thing should be that the solution should be done in the best interest of kids.

This act does all of that. It takes away the argument and says we’re gonna focus on kids. So if everyone can be served who wants to be a foster parent or adoptive parent, and religious organizations can practice this service according to their faith, then everyone wins because the kids then will have the maximum opportunity to find a quality forever home. And that’s what we need to be focused on. That’s not what happened in Illinois.

Harkness: You’re now advocating to address this from the federal level. Why?

Roach: The fight that I described earlier, religious liberties versus civil rights, is happening in several other states around the country. The ACLU is continually perpetuating lawsuits to try and attempt to drive out religious organizations that have the radical belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Harkness: In general, how bad is the foster care and adoption crisis?

Roach: Do a simple Google search. You’ll see headline after headline after headline in states across the country where there’s a foster home shortage. Not only in Illinois but in many, many other states. I’ve read articles where they can’t find homes and so kids are staying in offices because there’s no home for them to be placed in. It has reached a crisis proportion, and it’s been exacerbated by the opioid crisis.

There have been studies that have shown that the need for foster homes has increased because there are a lot more kids now coming into care because [of] neglect, because the parents are so addicted that their addiction is their only focus. Children are being left home alone, children are being not fed, children are not going to school. And so the state is coming in and removing those children because they’re in dangerous situations. And so it has definitely grown the need.

We are in a very difficult situation right now, and these kids are suffering. We need to think about how can we, as a society, reach out to all segments of our population to find people who would provide care and homes for these children. We don’t need to be shunning people and organizations. We need to be maximizing our opportunities to find these parents.

Harkness: Where do you go from here?

Roach: One of our strengths is that we are able to provide a wide array of services. And so after this happened to us, our bishop and our board began planning to see what else we could do out there to fulfill the mission of providing mercy and love to people who are hurting.

We’ve developed other programs—legal service programs, rural outreach programs, immigration programs—since we lost foster care and adoption.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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