But dear Jane is going to disabuse us of our willfull obtuseness by letting us know that abortion is all about the empty headed stupidity of lazy, good-for-nothing, empty headed vagina bearers who just didn't have the brains to take pills or make the penis wear a raincoat.

Jane furthers her lazy summation ass yanker with the gem that sex education has nothing to do with abortion rates.

Apparently Jane lacks the ability to do basic Google searches.

Medical News Today (10 Jul 2005):

AFP/Yahoo! News on Thursday examined Vietnam's high abortion rate and the lack of sex education among young people in the country. According to the Vietnam Family Planning Association, the country has one of the world's highest abortion rates. About 1.4 million abortions are performed annually in the country, which has a population of 82 million. Gender inequality -- which increases the rate of sex-selective abortion -- and a lack of sex education and contraceptive use are the main causes of the high abortion rate, experts say.

Guttmacher Institute

• More than 2 out of 3 public school districts have a policy to teach sexuality education. The remaining 33% of districts leave policy decisions up to individual schools or teachers.

• 86% of the public school districts that have a policy to teach sexuality education require that abstinence be promoted. 35% require abstinence to be taught as the only option for unmarried people and either prohibit the discussion of contraception altogether or limit discussion to its ineffectiveness. The other 51% have a policy to teach abstinence as the preferred option for teens and permit discussion of contraception as an effective means of preventing pregnancy and STDs.

The pregnancy rate among U.S. women aged 15-19 has declined steadily--from 117 pregnancies per 1,000 women in 1990 to 93 per 1,000 women in 1997. Analysis of the teenage pregnancy rate decline between 1988 and 1995 found that approximately 1/4 of the decline was due to delayed onset of sexual intercourse among teenagers, while 3/4 was due to the increased use of highly effective and long-acting contraceptive methods among sexually experienced teenagers.

Oops Jane, apparently sex education does lower the pregnancy rate. Or maybe Jane thinks these people learned the correct way to use birth control from the bathroom stall walls at their local high school?

More ass yanking:

People who get abortions can be divided into three categories: those who were using birth control perfectly, but had an unforeseeable accident; those who were using birth control imperfectly ("imperfect" use apparently, in many of the statistics collected, includes "oops, we're out of condoms!"), and those who weren't using birth control. The largest group is apparently group number three.

If Jane had done some research on this topic before popping off (or even bothered to post the "many statistics" she's citing), she'd have known that people who get abortions are statistically divided into eight categories. And instead of digging up ways to blame the pregnant woman, these are actually rational, reasonable categories:

Abortion Statistics - Decisions to Have an Abortion (U.S.)

*25.5% of women deciding to have an abortion want to postpone childbearing.
*21.3% of women cannot afford a baby.
*14.1% of women have a relationship issue or their partner does not want a child.
*12.2% of women are too young (their parents or others object to the pregnancy.)
*10.8% of women feel a child will disrupt their education or career.
*7.9% of women want no (more) children.
*3.3% of women have an abortion due to a risk to fetal health.
*2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health.

While I'm sure there will be those who willfully find ways to blame the woman for having sex and not forcing the man to wear a condom (like its the woman's job to make the man take responsibility), its unbearably lazy to think that this somehow just ends abortion.

This sort of "lets shame her like Hester Prynne" attitude plays well with the conservative "thinkers". But it doesn't play well when when it smacks into reality:

Jen (not her real name) is administrator of a women’s health clinic in the South that provides abortions. She has noted with alarm the recent rise in illegal abortion in her community. For some of the women she sees—after their initial attempts at abortion fail—whether Roe v. Wade is technically still the law of the land is beside the point. The combination of the procedure’s cost, the numerous regulations that her state imposes and the stigma surrounding abortion is leading a growing number of women to choose self-abortion or an untrained practitioner over legal abortion. Finding accurate data about the number of cases is almost impossible. However, Jen’s abortion-providing colleagues in other parts of the country, who communicate their experiences through a listserv, share her observation of a recent perceptible rise in illegal abortion in their clinics as well.

Making abortion illegal doesn't lower the abortion rate. It forces it underground:

“Most commonly, they ingest a whole bottle of quinine pills, with castor oil...we try to get them to the ER before their cardiac rhythm is interrupted...Sometimes they douche with very caustic products like bleach. We had a patient, a teen, who burned herself so badly with bleach that we couldn’t even examine her, her vaginal tissue was so painful....”

“Our local hospital tells me they see 12-20 patients per year, who have already self-induced or had illegal abortions. Some make it, some don’t. They are underage or poor women mostly, and a few daughters of pro-life families...”

People will find a way..even if it means risking their lives or their ability to have children again.

There are other inaccurate, lazy and silly sections in the post that Jane wrote, but honestly this is enough.

I'm not asking to change anyone's mind on abortion. I just want people who write about it to stop pretending they know what the hell they're talking about.

Its annoying. Its irritating. Its lazy.

And most importantly: it puts shit out there that isn't true. The Republicans people keep electing to office are already doing enough of that.